The main goal of the protest is to prevent 5000 people from dying every year in Macedonia from air pollution. We are not in a state of war, and obviously we have a big problem because 5000 people lose their lives a year according to the latest European figures, and how many more people are sick with respiratory, heart disease and everything else that comes with breathing this toxic air. This was stated by Gorjan Jovanovski, a councilor in the City of Skopje and an activist from Green Humane City, who is the organizer of today's protest march for cleaner air.

- What is the point of us not going outside and asking for this decades-old problem to begin to be solved, because here I am as an activist for the last 10 years saying this and we are not moved from a dead point, simply waiting for us all to die out? - asks Jovanovski in an interview for the program "Sloboden Pechat".

The protest, which starts at 16:2 p.m. in front of the Ministry of Environment and will continue in front of the Parliament and in front of the Government, was attended by environmental associations from Skopje: Chance for Center, OXNUMX coalition, Independents for Karposh, Greens from Gazi Baba, as well as others from the whole country. mass is expected, because air pollution threatens the lives of all citizens equally.

- Honestly, if we don't have mass, we honestly don't deserve to breathe clean air. This is not a protest that I am doing because I want to do this or you or anyone else. We do this for us and we may do it for the most selfish reasons, which is to breathe clean air. There is no more selfish reason than that. People, one out of nine children die, one out of nine children in Macedonia die from air pollution. We should be abnormal to say that we are "okay" with such a future for our children. Let's gamble away their lives, why? Because we just don't want to solve the problem of air pollution, so, yes, we expect mass, we expect everyone to go out, come there, after work, there is an opportunity for people to go out after work on the street itself. So from 16:XNUMX on Tuesday in front of the Ministry of Environment, we will go to the Parliament, we will go to the Government and to all the national authorities that need to solve this problem on a national level and of course let's not forget our dear local governments that they rarely lift a finger - says Jovanovski.

Due to the air pollution, Skopje was also at the top of the infamous list of cities in the world and in Europe with the most polluted air this fall. The polluters of the capital, as well as in other cities throughout the country, are known, but there is no national strategy for green energy and environmental projects that will drastically reduce the pollution that harms the health of citizens.

- This is the same problem that is repeated throughout all the valley cities in Macedonia. We have the industry that creates the huge emissions and is not controlled at all, especially those with A or B integrated permits. Everything was measured, it was not measured, there was - there was no measurement. We can't do that. If we want to know how much the industry is polluting, we must have 24-hour monitoring. That is the first. Secondly, we know that households or anyone to heat and state institutions that still use fuel oil for heating must switch to an ecological way of heating, whether it will be with the help of inverter air conditioners and photovoltaics that will allow them to consume less electricity and finally, finally – the traffic. We are in a car-centric city that has no real way for people to transport themselves especially with the state of public transport at the moment and that means we have three main fronts to fight on and the fourth is waste. They are located, we just don't have a real strategy for solving them - says Jovanovski.

Specifically for Skopje, the problem with public city transport, the lack of environmentally friendly buses and the stability of transport, encourages air pollution, and the lack of political will and constructiveness on the part of the city authorities contributes to the situation remaining without a solution:

- The city of Skopje can do a lot. We submitted 19 proposals to them and every year we submit those proposals. Sometimes they are voted by the other councilors, sometimes they are not. When they pass, the City of Skopje refuses to implement them, they simply create a kind of circus and pretend that there is no pollution, which is a madhouse. Here, if we start from public city transport. First, it must be stabilized, it must be shown that we have public transport that can be relied on, and secondly, it must be a long process of creating stable public transport for people to change their habits. If we install new buses tomorrow, I don't believe that everyone will leave their cars immediately and hop on the buses, which means that this is a long process, but we haven't even taken the first step, the baby step, let alone think that we will change them the habits of citizens to use public transport.

In the last period, it is evident the absence of specific actions of the competent authorities for the control of pollutants and the implementation of a penal policy that will force them to meet the environmental standards. Corruption, which has penetrated deep into all the pores of Macedonian society, prevents the real handling of all problems, including pollution.

- We don't have enough inspectors. In the City of Skopje, there is not a sufficient number of inspectors who can go to all locations where there is a problem with air pollution, detect it and further sanction the one who violates the law. They have one vehicle. Where will they arrive with one car in Skopje at all those hotspots that happen to be sanctioned. The problem is huge, and we do not have enough capacity to solve it, and of course there must be additional systemic solutions. We have and we know that there is corruption in Macedonia and there are simply inspectors who will go to the spot, but they will not act according to their duty because there is a moment of corruption. We have a deep problem in the system that starts with a lack of staff and ends with a lack of trust in it - says Jovanovski.

He is determined that the problem with the enormous air pollution must be solved at the national level, the right solution must be found, and the civil sector has already offered constructive proposals that will not come on the agenda before the Government and the institutions.