Geological engineer Zoran Djajic, who worked on the reconstruction of the Railway Station building in Novi Sad until March 2023, tells H1 that the work was done on the canopy and that what Serbian Minister of Construction Goran Vesic says is not true.

Dzaic says that he sent letters to several addresses, asking for the removal of the marble slabs on the facade of the building, but also to check what is behind them. But as he added, no one answered.

"First of all, what the officials say is not true. The canopy was being worked on. In the first phase, the ceramics on the upper part were repaired, and only cosmetic decoration of the canopy was done. In the second phase, during the work on the facade and the reconstruction of the stone cladding, in 2023 I sent a report to the contractors, which was received by everyone - from the ministry onwards, in which I requested the removal of the marble slabs of the building to check the substrate beneath them, with the aim of repairing the sub-floor and installing new marble slabs that were foreseen by the project", said Dzaic.

Geological engineer Zoran Đajić, who until March 2023 worked on the reconstruction of the railway station building in Novi Sad, says that the work was done on the superintendent, that what Minister Vesić says is not true. pic.twitter.com/wI6F5Hx6DF

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On the front part, as Dzaic added, cables were placed that held the canopy, descending from the roof to give additional strength to the console.

“The canopy had no poles. It was held in such a way that the console was tied to the building, and the load-bearing capacity of the entire canopy was ensured by cables that were attached to the roof of the building. "If the plates were removed, it would probably have been noticed that the substrate was not good and it might have been discovered that the cables might have corroded," Jaic points out.

The geological engineer points out that he does not know what the situation was there, but "the fact is that that part was not built and the contractor decided to just repaint the panels that needed to be replaced."

"The base of those panels had to be repaired. That the canopy was not worked on is not correct because the canopy was later covered with glass and the designer in 1965, when he was working on the station, worked on the consoles and the front part was connected and the spaces between them were and those weights hold that amount concrete and that material," he explained.

Who and in what way decided to cover all this, we do not know.

"I was there from the official supervision of the stone until June 2023, when my contract expired, I was no longer employed, these are things that were done later, so I don't have direct insight into who exactly did the work, but it is known who was the contractor, all knows which companies were doing the work at that time, so we have official supervision, we have a design house, we have contractors and we have the former minister Tomislav Momirović, who visited the building while they were working, and the current minister and he must resign, and then vertically, all the way down," he said.

He adds that three days earlier his grandchildren were in that station and were sitting under the canopy. When asked if he received an answer to his letters and reports, he answered - no.

"No one did, I insisted several times that those panels be removed. All other parts, facades and floors, were all made according to the project and according to my reports. Nobody wanted to do that part. And it was painted before the arrival of the president, they often came there, of course the current prime minister also came, who is absolutely responsible for all that because at that time he was the mayor, whenever they came, they brought companies from Novi Sad, who painted the building and of course paid about that," he said.

He says that it is absolutely impossible to reconstruct such a building without such a work as a canopy.

"That's why I claim – the minister is not telling the truth," he said.

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