The residents of Mostar gathered around the initiative “Because it concerns us” demanded an urgent solution for that landfill and its relocation to a new location on Wednesday in front of the Uborak landfill.
They also warned that, if a new solution is not publicly offered, in the coming days they will enter into a complete blockade of the Uborak landfill, from which they will not withdraw.
Representative in the Assembly of Herzegovina Neretva Canton and one of the initiators of the initiative “Because it concerns us” Omer Hujdur said that with yesterday’s fire at this location, and due to the carelessness of the authorities, the citizens were once again threatened.
“Yesterday we had an unpleasant scene, a fire happened again at the landfill, which was caused by the carelessness of the landfill management, the mayor (Mario Kordić) and the president of the Mostar City Council (Salem Marić), who allowed the management to deposit nylon and plastic on the body of the landfill, which was closed 15 years ago,” he believes.
As Hujdur says, the citizens came to the landfill to say that they will not tolerate it anymore and that in the coming period they will stop and block the landfill again if direct solutions are not proposed soon, that is, a new location for depositing.
“We have already had two meetings with the federal minister of environment and tourism (Nasiha Pozder), who showed the desire and will to solve this problem and offered some solutions that we did not have until now. The previous authorities talked about how to solve the problem, but no concrete solution was ever offered. She said that the solution is an incinerator like they saw in Slovenia and that it will not be at this location because we have made it clear that we will never allow a landfill in these areas again,” he emphasized.
Hujdur also added that these days they are working on criminal charges against the authorities, i.e. the director of the landfill, the mayor and the president of the City Council of Mostar.
“Surely in the coming days, the criminal charges will be submitted to the Prosecutor’s Office, so we will see if they will be activated, and we hope that they will be, because we have all the prerequisites for them to be active and for these people to be called for an interview and answer for what they did in this area,” he underlined.
Edhem Čustović, a resident of the village of Gornji Vrapčići and a member of the Citizens’ Association “Jer nas se tiče”, added that yesterday’s fire at the landfill was the initiator of the gathering, telling the city authorities that if they do not undertake all activities related to finding a new location, they will be forced to block the landfill in the coming period.
“This seems to be the only way to meet our demands and to sit down at the table to solve this problem that has been going on for four or five years. In the old area, where garbage disposal stopped 15 years ago, in the last 20 days the director, probably by order of his bosses, has been dumping garbage that caught fire yesterday. This population intervened and called the police and the fire department to put out the fire,” he pointed out.
In the end, Čustović repeated that he would block this location if their demands were ignored.
