Skopje, 25 September 2023 (MIA) — Only around 5,000 of the estimated 12-13,000 elevators in the country have been registered prior to their installation and although elevator contractors need to follow the EN 81-77 safety rules for the construction and installation of elevators, these rules are largely ignored, according to Macedonian Lift Association president Goran Sekovski at the 3rd Regional Symposium on Lifts and Escalators SEELift 2023 held in Skopje on Sept. 25-26.

According to Sekovski, all owners of elevators in residential or office buildings need to have a maintenance contract and their elevator devices need to be inspected once a year.

Between 80 and 90 percent of government institutions, business companies and hotels do this in practice, but this is not the case with many residential buildings, he said, estimating that some 50 percent of elevator devices were not regularly inspected, with some of them having never been inspected at all or registered by the State Technical Inspectorate.

"The task of the Inspectorate is to keep an elevator registry, but they can only do that if an inspection has been done and if they are informed about it. We have about 5,000 registered elevators and we believe there are about 12-13,000, which we are waiting to be confirmed by the last census figures," the Macedonian Lift Association head told MIA.

Speaking about elevator maintenance, he said some people "repair things themselves, although this is against the law." He added that the main issue, however, was whether elevator maintenance companies were competent enough.

"We are trying to develop guidelines with the minimum requirements that these companies doing the work of installation, servicing and maintenance should meet. Because there are no requirements right now," Sekovski said.

As for "Lifts and Elevators Subject to Seismic Conditions," the topic of the two-day symposium organized by the Macedonian Lift Association in cooperation with associations from Croatia and Bulgaria, Sekovski said the European EN 81-77 standard was mandatory in the country but compliance was poor.

According to Croatian Elevator Association (Hrvatska udruga za dizala) representative Ranko Cizmar, elevator maintenance is crucial in preventing accidents or elevator breakdowns.

"We will try to request through the Accreditation Agency that the people who do servicing regularly attend training courses once a year," Cizmar said.

Representatives from 13 regional countries as well as from Italy, Sweden and the USA are participating in the 3rd Regional Symposium on Lifts and Escalators SEELift 2023. The previous two SEELift conferences were held in Zagreb in 2022 and Ohrid in 2019. mr/