Several dozen households of the Local Community (MZ) "Crkvine" in Donja Tara claim that in that part of the Kolašin municipality they have been waiting for years for the asphalting of a section of several kilometers that connects them to the main road and the city.
Although half of the road to Pješčanica was partially paved before the last local elections in Kolašin, the remaining part of the section, according to locals, is in a catastrophic state. Especially after the recent storm and heavy rainfall, the section has been further damaged to the point that, as they vividly describe it, “it can only be passed by an armored vehicle.”
"We have been waiting for years for the Municipality to finally keep its promises and stop ignoring the needs of dozens of households here. Roads to much more distant villages, with significantly smaller populations, are regularly asphalted and, as we hear, significant money is being invested in them. The local government publicly boasts of its commitment to investing in rural infrastructure, but obviously that part of our road, which these days can only be passed by rare off-road vehicles or, if they had them, by 'armored' vehicles, is a huge problem. We have heard empty promises, and today the road is in far worse condition than ever before, especially after the recent storm that further worsened the situation," say the residents of this Kolašin village.
According to the data they obtained, the Municipality has earned several hundred thousand euros in revenue in recent years from part of the forest concession fee for the Pješčanica area. However, they claim that not a single euro of that money was invested in the road itself. The heavy trucks and work machines of the concessionaire, the locals explain, have "completely finished off the road and turned it into an impassable quagmire" with their daily passage and transport of timber.
"It is incomprehensible that so much natural wealth is being extracted from one area, that the municipality receives a significant portion of funds from forest concession fees, about which we have precise data, and at the same time, they do not even look at us. It is even more incomprehensible that certain municipal officials no longer answer our phones, although some of them even promised us that the road would be urgently repaired. We do not know what they are planning and whether this road is even in the municipal projections for investments in road infrastructure this year, or we have been completely forgotten," they say.
Several municipal officials, whom our editorial team tried to contact, did not answer calls yesterday. Therefore, it was not possible to get an official answer to numerous doubts and complaints from residents. According to the draft budget for next year, about 1,2 million euros are planned for the maintenance of municipal roads.
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