‘Gospić Is Our Home’ Initiative Sends Message to Plenković and Ministers Visiting the City

Four days before a planned protest in Gospić, Prime Minister Andrej Plenković and members of his government are coming to the city for talks on the illegally dumped waste there.

The meeting will take place at 9 a.m. at the offices of Lika-Senj County. Participants will include representatives of the relevant institutions, the county prefect, all mayors and municipal heads in the county, and citizen initiatives involved in the cleanup effort.

The “Gospić Is Our Home” initiative says the authorities have already held a news conference about the measures they are taking, while changing the proposed cleanup models several times. It says government representatives met with the initiative after residents announced a highway blockade, agreeing to publish analyses and carry out urgent removal of the waste without covering it.

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We call on the prime minister to hear the people’s demands on Sept. 5, then convene concrete meetings, make concrete decisions and take concrete action.

The group says the authorities later moved toward a tender for covering the waste without informing its members, despite warnings from experts. It also objects to what it describes as attempts to portray the initiative as merely a “case” and to relativize the findings after the analyses were published.

The initiative says parliamentary proceedings failed to deliver a solution and that the people have now said, “Enough is enough!” It argues that the prime minister’s visit four days before the protest is not an effort to solve the problem, but an attempt to repair political damage. “We call on the prime minister to hear the people’s demands on Sept. 5, then convene concrete meetings, make concrete decisions and take concrete action,” it said.

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Enough is enough!