Urgently revoke the odd-even measure and convene an emergency session of the Sarajevo Canton Assembly

Citizens of Sarajevo Canton, especially during the winter months, face enormous air and overall environmental pollution, which is a consequence of the lack of any development vision for Sarajevo Canton, particularly in the areas of ecology and human health protection, which the cantonal government should have.

The Sarajevo Canton government tolerates illegal construction, air, water and soil pollution, ignores the dire state of infrastructure, and in these circumstances adopts unreasonable, partial and improvised measures, such as the traffic ban based on the odd-even system, announced by the SDP BiH, Patria reports.

Is it possible that when making such a decision, no one in the Cantonal government looked at the calendar, thereby putting our citizens who celebrate Christmas in a situation where they cannot celebrate their holiday with their loved ones?! Or did they simply not care?

It is particularly absurd that such a major measure is adopted across the board, without any analysis of the extent to which personal vehicles contribute to air pollution. For the Sarajevo Canton government, it seems the key factor of pollution is the odd or even number on license plates, not the condition and age of vehicles in the Canton, so engines that meet ecological standards and those below Euro3 are lumped together.

For the Sarajevo Canton government, it seems there is no problem either that citizens of the Canton do not have access to environmentally friendly energy sources at reasonable prices, so it continues to rob them with inappropriate prices for gas and electricity, which contributes to increased use of low-quality coal, heavy fuel oil, etc.

Therefore, the Sarajevo Canton government is obliged to explain to the citizens of Sarajevo whether the cantonal inspections during the summer and autumn prevented the sale of low-quality coal in the canton's territory, why they did not prevent the continuous poisoning of citizens, especially the most vulnerable categories, children and the elderly, by subsidizing ecological energy sources in heating systems? Why was free transport to our mountains not provided for these categories of society on days of highest pollution?

The Cantonal government is obliged to explain why it did not inform the public in a timely manner about the preparation of this decision, so that both citizens and businesses could prepare in time and avoid the economic damage caused by this decision.

Therefore, we demand from the Sarajevo Canton government that this unreasonable decision be revoked and that the Canton Assembly be urgently convened to adopt more comprehensive and reasonable decisions based on the recommendations of experts, rather than a few incompetent individuals from the Sarajevo Canton government.