SDP denounces cleanup proposal in Gospić

SDP President Siniša Hajdaš Dončić said on Friday that, after ten years of HDZ-led government under Prime Minister Andrej Plenković, people have lost faith in state institutions.

Reacting to the government's decision to remove just 650 tons of non-hazardous waste from Gospić, Hajdaš Dončić said that, apart from monitoring local drinking water, there is no monitoring to determine whether private wells and soil are safe for citizens and farmers in the Lika region.

"Instead of Lika serving as Croatia's 'green breadbasket,' it has been turned into an environmental time bomb. Now everyone can see that the waste management proposal put forward by the HDZ makes no sense. The company which won the original tender for the cleanup quit. Now they've handed it over to two cement companies to deal with. The public is furious because they didn't resolve the basic issue: there is no remediation plan or on-site triage. Do these cement companies even have the proper licenses to store waste? Lets see them first, then we can move forward with the best plan," said Hajdaš Dončić.

The SDP leader also claimed that Plenković is the first European prime minister to turn silos - symbols of prosperity and agricultural production - into garbage bins.

He said this in reference to the silos where some of the roughly 33,000 tons of waste at the illegal site in Gospić has been dumped.

"This is evidence of a systemic collapse that extends beyond the system responsible for environmental protection. Citizens see this collapse reflected in the healthcare and education systems, as well as in the economy. In reality, a functioning system does not exist in Croatia," the SDP president said at a press conference.