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Residents of Gospić Respond to Plenković: “We Wrote to You Four Times, and This Is How You Speak to Us?”
🇭🇷 Croatia /Environment & Climate

Residents of Gospić Respond to Plenković: “We Wrote to You Four Times, and This Is How You Speak to Us?”

From Večernji List · () Croatian

Translated from Croatian and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources Ongoing story
  • The Gospić je naš dom civic initiative accused Prime Minister Andrej Plenković of ignoring four requests for a meeting over illegally dumped waste.
  • The group criticized Plenković after he held a meeting in Gospić without its representatives and questioned their decision not to attend days before a planned Zagreb protest.
  • The initiative said covering the waste because of rain, three years later, does not resolve the problem of hazardous waste buried in Lika’s karst soil.

“Eighteen months later and three days before the protest” was the headline chosen by the Gospić je naš dom civic initiative after Prime Minister Andrej Plenković’s remarks in Gospić. The group says it has spent months seeking a meeting over illegally dumped waste and objected to being criticized for not attending one scheduled just days before its major protest in Zagreb.

Plenković met ministers, officials from the responsible institutions and local authorities in Gospić to discuss the cleanup. Representatives of Gospić je naš dom did not attend. The initiative said it had not received an official invitation, while also stating that it would not have accepted a meeting so close to the September 5 protest because it viewed it as an attempt to repair political damage.

Eighteen months you did not even reply, and now this is how you answer us?

— Gospić je naš dom initiativeThe group said the prime minister had not responded to four requests for a meeting.

The group said it had contacted the prime minister four times since the scandal emerged, asking him to sit down with its representatives, but received no response. “Eighteen months you did not even reply, and now this is how you answer us?” the initiative said. “Citizens are not the ones who need to answer you.”

Citizens are not the ones who need to answer you.

— Gospić je naš dom initiativeThe initiative rejected criticism over its decision not to attend a meeting before the protest.

It also challenged Plenković’s statement that the entire system would receive “new momentum and new tasks” and be in better condition than before. The initiative asked what had changed to produce that new momentum now. “Nothing has changed except one thing: you saw how many of us will turn out on September 5,” it said. “The waste is the same, the findings are the same, the laws are the same.”

The group argued that the system had not started working on its own, but because citizens had said enough. It also rejected the practice of covering the waste because of rain, saying that doing so three years later did not solve the problem of hazardous material buried in Lika’s karst land. The “Walk for Lika, Walk for Croatia” protest will take place in Zagreb on September 5 and will demand attention to the waste problem and accountability from the authorities.

Nothing has changed except one thing: you saw how many of us will turn out on September 5. The waste is the same, the findings are the same, the laws are the same.

— Gospić je naš dom initiativeThe group challenged the government’s claim that the waste-management system would receive new momentum.
About this summary

Originally published by Večernji List in Croatian. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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