With the help of a Chinese loan, the Serbian state plans to set up wastewater treatment plants in over 250 towns in the country.
Kragujevac is just one of 65 locations, that are included in the Serbian-Chinese project called ‘Cista Srbija’ (Clean Serbia), in addition to Mionica, Obrenovac, Novi Sad, Novi Becej, Kuljevo, Varvarin, Knic and others. Some experts, however, claim that the project is just a hoax.
As Nova.rs writes, the project (worth 4 billion euros) would end in Serbia having over ‘250 small Rio Tintos’, i.e. dirty, obsolete, energy inefficient and uneconomical sewage treatment plants, which are therefore harmful to the long-term economy of the state, the population, the environment and human health.
The city of Kragujevac marked the Cista Srbija project as ‘the most important investment for the future of Kragujevac’. Work on the project in Lazarevac began in October last year, and the Ministry of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure’s press release states that 48 million euros have been allocated for this purpose.
According to the Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure, Tomislav Momirovic, the goal in the next five years, is for more than 80% of towns in Serbia to have sewage infrastructure and wastewater treatment plants, so that wastewater, when discharged into waterways, would be clean and the citizens would also have clean drinking water.
According to the Energetski Portal website, the implementation of the project began in Novi Sad on 9 October, with the construction of a sewerage system in Kisac and Cenej, which will soon make the problem of emptying and draining septic tanks a thing of the past for the population of these villages near Vojvodina’s capital.
(Nova, 27.04.2022)
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