Non-governmental organizations MANS and Green Home will send next week an initiative to the Parliamentary Committee on Health, Labor and Social Welfare with a proposal for a control hearing of the Minister of Health Budimir Segrt in relation to illnesses and premature deaths of citizens of Pljevlja Municipality, which are the result of pollution caused by the dominant operation of the existing Thermal Power Plant and Coal mine Pljevlja.
At the initiative to the President of the Committee on Health, Labor and Welfare Zoran Jelic will be suggested that on the control hearing invites and the Director of the Institute of Public Health Boban Mugosa, Director of the Special Hospital for Pulmonary Diseases in Brezovik Gordana Reljic and Director of the General Hospital in Pljevlja Zoran Tabas.
This will be the second initiative for control hearing that Green Home and MANS sent to the competent committees of the Parliament regarding the Government’s controversial project of building the Second Block of the Thermal Power Plant in Pljevlja. In fact, a ten days ago an official initiative was addressed to the Committee for Economy and Finance with the request that regarding the economic viability of the project is organized hearing of Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic, Deputy Prime Minister Vujica Lazovic and ministers of Finance and Economy Radoje Zugic and Vladimir Kavaric.
The latest initiative proposes the hearing of the Minister of Health and heads of the health institutions in order to make deputies of the Parliament, as well as the overall public, familiar with the fact whether in the country in general can be found data on the types and number of illnesses and premature deaths in Pljevlja, which is one of the the most polluted cities in Europe, and what kind of impact can be expected in the case of construction of new power plant.
MANS and Green Home had already assessed that the Government totally irresponsibly entered the entire project not just because of the fact that a comprehensive and independent study showing the impact of future Thermal Power Plants on human health is not made, but also for the fact that is not calculated the cost of health and social expenditure in the coming decades due to premature deaths and diseases caused by different types of operation of the new block.
The extend to how much can be done about the huge cost of the best shows of the international research organization Greenpeace, which in mid-2013, using a sophisticated calculation method that was developed at the University of Stuttgart, estimated the costs of health and the environment for 40 years of the operation of the Second Block of the Thermal Power Plant in Pljevlja at a whopping 2 5 billion euros, while for the same period are expected 622 premature deaths.
The issue of costs of health and environment the Government persistently keeps silent, while the total investment costs related to the construction of the Second Block, procurement of equipment and related investments with the Coal Mine greatly underestimated. In those terms the Government only shows the costs of construction and equipment procurement of 338 million euros, offered by the Czech company Skoda Praha, while the Research Center of MANS analyzing an official data estimated that these costs together with the related investments would exceed one billion euros.
To initiate a public discussion on the problems of financial sustainability of the project, MANS and Green Home, will organize tomorrow in Podgorica a round table “The second block of PP Pljevlja – economic and environmental challenges”.
At a round table is expected the presence of representatives of the National Energy Company and Coal Mine, political parties, the Government institutions, economic experts, and non-governmental organizations that are particularly active in the field of environmental protection and public health.
MANS and Green Home
