The Minister of Defense of Montenegro, Dragan Krapović, the Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Development of the North, Damjan Ćulafić, and the Mayor of Tivat, Željko Komnenović, yesterday visited the works on the removal of municipal and construction waste from the location of the company Montepranzo-Boka produkt AD in Tivat, which are being carried out by members of the Montenegrin Army as part of the "Army at Your Doorstep" campaign.
The operation of the state-owned company "Zaštita prostora Crne Gore" is also participating in the action.
The action to remove tens of thousands of cubic meters of mixed and bulky waste that was temporarily stored at this location due to problems in the functioning of the joint transfer station for Tivat and Kotor in nearby Lovanja is being implemented at the request of the Ministry of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Northern Development in cooperation with the Municipality of Tivat.
In the past few months, tens of thousands of cubic meters of waste have been removed from here in actions funded by the Municipality and the Tivat Public Utility Company.
Minister of Ecology and Sustainable Development Damjan Ćulafič thanked the Municipality of Tivat, NGO activists and citizens for, as he said, "the initiative they have had for months to improve the environment in Tivat and to solve, for example, accumulated and inherited problems as efficiently as possible", as well as the Army of Montenegro for joining the waste removal campaign.
"I would like to emphasize that the "Army at Your Doorstep" campaign is truly a great refreshment, primarily for Montenegrin society, and it gives me great honor and pleasure that the ecology sector has just found itself, I would say, among the beneficiaries of this campaign and the good that the Army of Montenegro is implementing, and for which it is recognized by our citizens. I am glad that in this specific case, the beneficiaries of their services and their assistance will not only be state institutions, but also citizens who, by cleaning this landfill and improving the state of the environment, will be in a situation to live in a much more beautiful and healthier environment," said Ćulafić.
The waste removal operation from the former Monteprazno agricultural estate will reportedly take about ten days, and the material will be transported to adequate landfills for construction and bulky waste in Cetinje, or Možura near Bar for mixed municipal waste.
Recalling that the Municipality has already implemented a tender worth 250.000 euros, and the Tivat Municipal Company previously invested 100.000 for the neutralization of the mixed waste landfill in Montepranzo, the Mayor of Tivat Željko Komnanović emphasized that now, with the new action in which the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Ecology are participating, "what was recently agreed upon during the visit to Tivat by the Head of the Delegation of the European Mission to Montenegro, Ambassador Johann Sattler, is being implemented."
"In this way, we will simply close the temporary landfill on the former Montepranzo farm for any further waste disposal. We have reactivated the agreement with the Municipality of Kotor and the Kotor Municipal Company on the use of the transfer station in Lovanja, where the collected quantities of waste from Tivat are now sent. There was also a recent presentation of the project for the rehabilitation of the entire Lovanja landfill, which also envisages the recultivation of the entire area," said Mayor Komnenović.
He pointed out that the new Spatial and Urban Plan of Tivat, which is currently being drafted, will also determine the location for the recycling yard in that city, "which means that we believe that the Tivat Municipal Enterprise will finally have all the prerequisites to manage waste in accordance with what is stipulated by positive legal regulations and environmental standards."
"I have to tell you that what the Tivat Municipal Company has done in the past to maintain, first of all, the cleanliness of the city at a high level, in a situation where they did not have a recycling yard or a transfer station on Lovanja at their disposal, is truly beyond the capacity of any local municipal company and that was extremely difficult. That is why we will work in close cooperation with the Ministry of Ecology and the Government of Montenegro in the future to create these preconditions," said Komnenović, adding that the Montepranza area will be closed to any waste disposal in the future.
"We will recultivate this area with a new project and then we will simply respond to the key requests of the Civil Aviation Agency and all those who have been concerned about the landfill and waste disposal at this location in the past," he concluded.
Minister of Defense Dragan Krapovič said that he was extremely pleased that the members and mechanization of the Engineering Company of the Armed Forces of Montenegro, through this action, are helping the broader efforts of the social community to affirm the constitutional designation of Montenegro as an ecological state, which, as he said, has not yet "become sufficiently alive."
"This location is particularly specific because it is located right next to Tivat Airport, the main coastal gateway to Montenegro, and somewhere it is the first impression of every guest who comes to Tivat and Montenegro through this airport. In that regard, I believe that we are doing a great thing together, to show, let's say in military terminology, interoperability between the local and state levels. When we have such an approach, we will have results very quickly. I believe that this landfill will be closed and rehabilitated very quickly and, I would say, what a location like this really requires, properly valorized in a completely different way than has been the case so far," emphasized Krapović, adding that the Armed Forces of Montenegro and the Ministry of Defense, through the "Army at Your Doorstep" campaign, are trying to "respond to the needs of citizens in as many cases as possible and solve some of the everyday problems they face" and in this way get even closer to the citizens.
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