MP Arta Tochi, at the conference “The Greens Are coming”, organized by CIVIL, stated that everything is politicized in our country, citizens in some places in our country don’t even decide on who their mayor should be, because someone else decided that for them.
“My city is in the first place according to pollution, and for a long time we thought that the black smoke we had was fog, characteristic for the winter time. We started with protests, a dozen people at the time, the next ones with more people, and Xhaferi’s public events helped for people to understand that it is actually pollution, that many people are sick because of the pollution. The bad thing was that these protests were organized by an Albanian, and Tetovo is a multinational city, so our fellow Macedonian citizens didn’t come to these protests then because of that reason. The good thing that came out of those protests was the closing down of the Jugohrom plant”, said Tochi.
Arta Tochi / photography: Goran Naumovski
Tochi added that in other countries in the West, when all of their problems are solved, that’s when they usually start thinking about ecology, but that it should actually be the opposite.
“I put ecology in the first place. For Macedonia to be with other civilized countries, we shouldn’t put as environment ministers people who are hearing the word “ecology” for the first time when they are elected as officials”, she said.
She says that the Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning serves people as prime ministers and other officials to give the Ministry when they want to reward someone, and this person doesn’t know what to do.
“Shar Mountain is in danger, we all need to raise our voices, it’s our mountain, we sing songs about it and should know that we all need to work on this, because it is being devastated. They are saying that the old wood should be cut down, so that new ones can grow, but the rivers and lakes on Shar will be used for hydro power plants and will serve people from SDSM, DUI and VMRO-DPMNE. I urge all people who have ecology awareness, not to leave those people who live their alone”, says Tochi.
In addition to Eco Guerrilla, there is another NGO called Let’s save Shar Mountain. The name itself refers that Shar is seeking salvation, from man himself. Popova Sapka is also part of Shar, I don’t know if you have visited it, it doesn’t look like it used to anymore, everything that is there is ruined and built without any plan, a neighbourhood of DUI has been built, having built weekend houses located a bit more isolated than the other ones, that is sad. They build with lots of money, not like ordinary citizens, because they are corrupt and have money and imagine what they leave behind”, said Tochi.
A. Petrovska
