Sarajevo residents suffocate and fall ill in polluted city: Government and premier show their incompetence

By: Edina Latif

Last year at this time, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina was choking in fog and smog. Due to an enormous increase in pollution, the second episode of Preparedness was declared.

Even then, experts and environmental associations warned that the authorities of Sarajevo Canton do not grasp the seriousness of the situation and are not taking any measures to mitigate the environmental crisis. In December 2015, activists from environmental associations distributed face masks to citizens on the streets.

Air quality expert Martin Tais has been warning for years that the use of coal must be stopped, as well as unplanned construction of high-rises, and the problem of traffic congestion must be resolved. Tais said this last December as well. At that time, the premier of Sarajevo Canton was Elmedin Konaković. However, what Tais said was not taken seriously at all, because a year later we found ourselves in an even more difficult situation - due to pollution, an Alert episode was declared.

And then it became evident that Konaković's government had done nothing in a year to reduce air pollution. The government had earlier directly contributed to the worsening of the situation by allowing the import of a dozen used buses from Turkey intended for public transport. These buses have Euro I level engines, the use of which has long been banned in the EU, and the law was even amended to allow such "environmental bombs" to be put into traffic. There are 165,000 cars on Sarajevo's streets, and Tais is one of those who constantly repeats that a longitudinal road through the city needs to be built.

If the travel time from Baščaršija to Ilidža were reduced from one hour to 10 minutes, the emission of harmful gases would be reduced sixfold, Tais believes.

It seems that experts have been talking to the wind all these years, because our cantonal premier admitted yesterday "that during the odd-even measure, they learned a lot from experts through some media"!?

It is truly tragicomic that the premier indirectly admits that "real experts" did not work on preparing the Plan of Intervention Measures, and that they have only now learned a lot from experts. So what was done in the past year?

- The opinion of Mr. Martin Tais, who spoke in the media yesterday about the measures that need to be taken to reduce air pollution, was particularly important to us. He is an expert with whom we will continue to discuss solving this problem – Konaković emphasized.

If anyone has been exposed in the media in recent years with warnings and proposals on how to reduce pollution, it is precisely Tais, but until now, apparently, he was not properly treated by the government nor consulted.

So who are the experts, members of the Operational Staff who worked on the Plan of Intervention Measures, and as one of the solutions offered Konaković the unreasonable odd-even solution, which yielded no results when it comes to reducing pollution? Ševal Kovačević, a court expert in traffic engineering, also says he would like to know the names of the experts who proposed this decision, and believes it is partly political and reckless, and that it was foisted on the government.

The odd-even measure was applied for only 32 hours. For 24 hours after its cancellation, the air quality index in Sarajevo remained dangerous. Unfortunately, the cantonal government, led by Premier Konaković, which in this emergency situation also showed its incompetence, behaves like an offended village bride.

Every critical media article they did not like was called "inaccurate, unverified, gossipy stories," and they themselves, including him, by the sudden cancellation of the odd-even measure, actually admitted that they had made hasty decisions. Accustomed to ad hoc solutions from authorities that only act when some misfortune befalls us, the residents of Sarajevo have no choice but to offer rain prayers and beg God for wind in the coming period to "drive away" the pollution.