Vetevendosje says Pristina municipality not cleaning streets

The Vetevendosje movement, through a communique, says the Pristina municipality has tenders in January for clearing snow from roads, but the situation in villages is alarming.

With January 7th, 2019, the winner of the winter maintenance tender of rural roads in Pristina has become public, the peak of difficult atmosphere conditions, when snow had reached up to half a meter. But despite the winner's proclamation, now that the second wave of heavy snow is coming in Kosovo, the city's roads and sidewalks continue to be uncleaned, and the municipality is practically in total deadlock”, the communique says.

The Vetevendosje movement, the centre in Pristina, says it has accepted complaints from citizens of most of Pristina's neighbourhoods and villages about difficult conditions and limited passage through the streets.

Although, such snow is normal for this period of the year, and there are already companies committed to cleaning, we don't understand where the problem is that the roads are not cleaning up. We ask municipal authorities to publicize plans for response in such atmosphere situations so that citizens too can appreciate and give their remarks about these plans. It's obvious that something is working with the municipality, not even when it has companies that maintain street maintenance. Even if this commitment is made completely late, as the case of rural road maintenance tender that has now been completed at the peak of the <x1) winter season, it is said.

The Vetevendosje Movement Centre in Pristina notes that the Pristina municipality has announced two different tenders for winter maintenance of roads -- one for city roads and the other for village streets. While the contract on the city's roads was signed in late November and is also late, considering the climate in Kosovo, the contract for rural roads was signed just two weeks ago, unable to make the necessary maintenance arrangements. For more of the data from our village dots, we have found that there are villages that have never been cleaned up by snow like the Barileva case. We raise doubts that municipal authorities do not plan for winter maintenance of roads. And that signed contracts are just the continuation of ad-hoc procedures for the face of the municipality to weather in recent moments the growing problems that are being caused in the capital, instead of becoming part of the well-designed plans for facilitated movement of citizens and public space use, without regard for climate period”, the VV response concludes.