Skopje, 14 August 2024 (MIA) - Skopje mayors are set to hold a coordination meeting on Wednesday at the initiative of the Mayor of Kisela Voda Municipality Orce Gjorgjievski. Talks will focus on the current situation in the capital.  

During a visit to Aerodrom Municipality on Tuesday, Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski said the institutions under the authority of the City of Skopje should do the work they are paid for and work in the interest of the citizens in the capital, in all municipalities, because the citizens deserve it. If there is no progress in a week, he stated, the Government will consider possibilities of taking away their competencies and resolving issues such as public city transport and hygiene.

"We get reactions from the citizens every day. I will raise this issue at the next session and I call on the "Communal Hygiene", on the City of Skopje to do the work they are paid for, the work the citizens pay them for, because what is happening in Skopje today looks like everything but a capital of a country that is part of the NATO Alliance and an EU candidate country. We must ask ourselves the question which is essentially important, not what we say, but what we do in the name of those values," said Mickoski. 

If there is no progress, i.e. a change in terms of the bad situation in Skopje, the Prime Minister said he will raise this issue at the next government session.

"If we see that there is no progress this week related to this issue, at the next government session I intend to speak openly about it and go a step further in what is the obligation of the people's government, which is to act in the name of the calls that we receive on a daily basis from the citizens of Skopje," Mickoski said. 

He noted that the idea of ​​each of the municipalities getting the right to set up their own municipal sanitation and hygiene service and inheriting the basic assets from the Public Enterprise "Communal Hygiene" should also be considered. 

PM Mickoski and the Association of the Units of the Local Self-Government of the Republic of North Macedonia (ZELS) signed on Tuesday a memorandum of cooperation and understanding, which signifies a commitment to collaboration, defines how future cooperation will proceed, establishes priorities, and projects the development of the local self-government system in the country.

Due to irregularities in work and non-compliance with employment contracts, the directors of the public enterprises "Parks and Greenery" and "Drisla", Martin Angelovski and Aleksandar Kuzinakov respectively, were dismissed from their posts on Tuesday. The City of Skopje announced via Facebook that by the end of this week, it will start conducting an extraordinary audit in the operation of all public enterprises. The city authorities said the results of the audit will be publicly available, and if irregularities are found in the work of the managers in the companies, the corresponding competent institutions will be notified.

Photo: MIA archive and Government