The President of the Municipality of Zeta, Mihailo Asanović, announced on "Colors of Morning" on TV Vijesti that he still hopes that the Government and Prime Minister Milojko Spajić will sit down with them at the table.
"I think the prime minister should have gotten involved much earlier. This is a problem that has been going on for decades, not months. And now, when everything is brought to a fait accompli, they want to build it 200 or 300 meters from other people's houses, with a facility that, according to the current project, also includes an incinerator. There is no such incinerator anywhere in Montenegro, and it has not been built in modern European countries for a long time," says Asanović.
He rejects claims by former mayor Ivan Vuković that locals were aware of the project from the beginning and that the process was completely transparent.
"If everything is so transparent, why can't we get a contract? Why can't we get a project? We've been searching through the free access to information system, searching from multiple addresses, there's been no response. And they want to install something on our territory that neither we nor the experts we hired have any insight into. That, in itself, is suspicious," he says.
He adds that he is particularly concerned about the recent decision of the Government and the Ministry of Ecology, according to which, as he claims, heavy construction and liquid waste from all over Montenegro will be separated and temporarily stored right within the KAP complex, just a few hundred meters from the location where the collector is planned.
"The citizens of Zeta are rightly upset, I've talked to many people and they all think the same. They promise to solve the red mud pool, but then they make the decision to dump the most dangerous construction waste from the entire country right there. If they want to solve the red mud problem, why are they bringing that waste to the same place? There are other locations. We warned them two months ago, we had a press conference, appealed to the Ministry of Ecology and the Environmental Protection Agency not to do it, but despite everything, the decision was made. And so, apparently, they will 'solve' the red mud pool as well. I don't believe in those promises anymore, they've been making promises for years," says Asanović.
When it comes to warnings about major financial damage and endangering the state's reputation, Asanović says that the amounts mentioned are exaggerated and unfounded.
"Why would the damage be 100 million? If they bought the equipment, they won't throw it away. If the equipment is so good, let them use it at a new location. We believe that the damage would be many times less, and the project could be implemented as early as next year at a new, adequate location," he emphasizes.
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