(Podgorica, 25 April 2012) – MANS supports the protests of disable workers that are currently being ignored by the Government of Montenegro, in spite of the fact that they are striking under the windows of government offices! We also support the aggrieved truck drivers that announced a blockade of the road leading to Kosovo, because Igor Lukšić’s cabinet is ignoring their interests, nor can it implement an effective economic policy.
All those aggrieved by the government have fundamental rights and they should use the mechanisms of civil protests since the Government is evidently no interests in our problems or our demands.
Lukšić’s cabinet must secure the mechanisms that will ensure that disabled workers receive an income that is dignified. It is unacceptable that ministers and the Prime Minister are ignoring those who’ve become disabled after working 20 or 30 years under difficult conditions, or that they ignore the demands of truckers who are blocking the road to Kosovo because they’ve become unemployed.
We are calling on the Association of Truckers to persevere in the fight for their rights even though they are facing threats of criminal charges and arrests, as they themselves have noted.
MANS is calling on all citizens of Rožaje, Pljevalja, Berane i Cetinje – where local protests are being organized this Friday – to not submit to pressures and threats, given that the peaceful gathering of citizens is Constitutionally guaranteed to all.
If Lukšić’s cabinet doesn’t want to do the job we are paying him to do, then we all must fight to pay clean bills without kickbacks, to annul all the bad privatization agreements and to find real investors, while the condition for all this is for the Government to leave!
The government should fall if it brought disabled workers to this situation, when it can’t run an economy policy and when Lukšić’s cabinet doesn’t care if hundreds of truck drivers have lost their jobs because of competition from Kosovo.
In the end, MANS calls on all citizens to assist the disabled workers who are protesting for two days now before the government’s buildings by bringing them food, water, blankets and anything else that would ease their ability to persevere until their demands are met.
