Podgorica, 3 November 2010 – The Government’s announcement that it is adopting the Draft Concessionary Act for the building of hydropower dams on the Morača river – merely 20 days after the completion of public consultations – confirms that its intent all along was to rush through and finalize the legal basis for this project. It is further proof that the public consultations initiated by the Government were simply designed to feign democratic processes and the satisfaction of legal requirements.
It’s now obvious that the Ministry of Economy completed the report from the public hearings so as to clear the way for the Government to adopt the Draft Concessionary Act. On the other hand we are still waiting, six months later, for the Ministry of Spatial Planning to release its own report from the public hearings held on the Draft Spatial Plan and the Strategic Impact Assessment.
This succession of steps further undermines any future consultations concerning the spatial plans for the hydropower network on the Morača, since all future decisions will have to conform with the requirements of the Concession Act and the eventual contract signed with the concessionaire.
In fact, public consultations on the Concession Act failed to answer two key questions posed by the public: first, how much the building of these hydropower stations will cost the citizens of Montenegro and second, to what extent this project will actually help solve the country’s energy deficit?
Furthermore, information still has not been released as to what revenues the state will receive from the dams, nor are the technical solutions offered to the future concessionaire known, let alone the consequences that this project will have on the localities most directly affected.
Since the March launch of public consultations on future of energy projects in Montenegro, MANS has attempted to obtain the studies showing the economic feasibility of this project from the Ministry of Economy. The requests were made on the basis of the Law on Free Access to Information.
Despite its legal obligations to comply, the Ministry of Economy continues to stubbornly refuse access to the requested documents, making further consultations on the hydropower project meaningless – a point that MANS has emphasized over the course of public consultations on the subject.
MANS has already filed 18 lawsuits at the Administrative Court against the Ministry for violating the Law on Free Access to Information and for its refusal to submit key data relating to the planned energy projects.
Therefore, we believe that it is absolutely unacceptable to continue with the process of approving the concessionary act and contract, so long as the Montenegrin public has not been informed of the actual reasons for which the state is entering into this deal. The government must make the actual interests behind the deal public, instead of hiding behind the often repeated fairy-tales concerning the north’s development, job-creation and the general economic welfare that will follow the submersion of the Morača canyon.
MANS is taking this opportunity to once again call on the Ministry of Economy to immediately make available to the public all the studies on which the economic feasibility of the entire project is based and to release the actual figures and deadlines that would corroborate their story about the benefits Montenegro’s citizens can expect from the irreversible devastation of the Morača canyon.
Dejan Milovac
Director, Urbanism Program
