Six of the contenders for Skopje city father tonight confronted their views on how the city should develop and how to solve its biggest problems in the next four years, in a debate on "360 degrees" on Alsat TV.

As expected, the topics on which the candidates spent the most of the allotted time were the biggest problems and challenges of the capital: pollution, traffic and rapid urbanization at the expense of the quality of life of Skopje residents.

According to Ana Petrovska, the candidate supported by the coalition of civil associations "Green Human City", the biggest polluters in Skopje are industry, construction and traffic. According to her, communal inspectors do not have sufficient and appropriate powers and they should be able to directly punish for burning cables in Vardarishte and near other informal settlements. She said she would fight against the reduction of green areas and uncontrolled construction in Skopje.

"Now we are on a turnaround: will the concreting continue or will we develop a General Urban Plan tailored to the people?" said Petrovska.

Aleksandar Tortevski from Your party He said that there is a plan to install solar collectors in the city public institutions, as well as that he advocates severe punishment of polluters, because so far "for 30 years no one has had their truck confiscated if he dumped it in a illegal dump".

Solar energy should be available to all citizens, who will be able to use and sell the electricity produced by subsidized photovoltaics, Tortevski said.

"Electricity will be produced on the roofs of all public institutions and it will be used to charge the electric vehicles that we will procure for the City free of charge." he said.

The candidate of the Left, Petar Georgievski, said he advocated for strict control of all factories, as well as a "ban on the import of medical waste and the termination of harmful contracts concluded by the City". He announced an initiative for eco-police, as well as incentives for taxi drivers for new cars, instead of the current "rotten" polluting vehicles.

"I responsibly claim that there is no medical waste, after nine years of criminal privatization attempts, we have returned Drisla. "The only big problem in Skopje is Vardarishte, for which a project has been prepared and which, unfortunately, has been a landfill in this city for 30 years," he replied. the current mayor and SDSM candidate, Petre Shilegov.

According to him, the "incompetent" adoption of the GUP in 2012 is responsible for the chaos in the urban planning, which will be corrected by the adoption of the new GUP, the preparation of which is in progress. Shilegov pointed out that in the new GUP there will be no place for heavy industry in Skopje.

"It is very important for the urbanism itself that in this whole part we anticipate the heavy industry to leave Skopje, so already G1, as an architectural designation" heavy industry "will not exist," said Shilegov.

There are hundreds of illegal landfills in Skopje, and Vardarishte is a serious problem, which endangers the quality of life and leaves consequences for the people in that part of the city, he said. Danela Arsovska, who is running with the support of VMRO-DPMNE. She believes that the General Urban Plan "should be opened to the citizens", and said that "there will be no more forgotten settlements in Skopje." Arsovska reiterated her commitment to free public transport, and also criticized Shilegov because, according to her, he did nothing but delay the resumption of projects left by his predecessor, Koce Trajanovski.

"All these projects that you had to realize were left to you by your predecessor. And you are now talking about "will" solutions? For "will"? "Please, you haven't started for four years, are you looking for another four years?" Arsovska addressed Shilegov.

"I will strive for politicians to do their job and not to interfere in the work of experts." "I will strive for the plans to always be made by experts in the field of ecology, horticulture, architects, spatial planners… Skopje should be an urban, modern, regulated city where there is order", said Beni Shaqiri, the candidate of the LDP-DOM coalition, Beni Shaqiri.