Skopje, 31 January 2026 (MIA) – Environmental activists from the civic initiative "Stop USJE" staged Saturday a protest against air pollution, demanding that the USJE cement plant operates according to environmental standards because, they urged, the people of Skopje have the right to health and the right to life.  

The protest march started in front of the Government, then proceeding to the building of the Parliament and in front of the Ministry of Environment and Physical Planning. The protesters urged the Ministry to decide according to the best European standards when the cement plant applies for renewal of its A-integrated environmental permit on March 12.

Citizens who live near the cement plant, in Skopje's Lisiche and Kisela Voda, addressed the protest demanding competence from the Environment Ministry in approving permits for industrial facilities.

Dragan Kavrakov, a graduate technologist who lives near the cement plant, said he was directly affected, noting that according to the A-integrated permit that USJE currently holds, it can produce 1,750,000 tons of cement per year and the amount of fuel it needs for combustion is approximately twice the amount that all vehicles in Skopje consume in a year.

"The integrated permit does not contain a single word on control of the fuels that enter the plant and are burned. They are allowed to emit 7,800 kilograms of sulphur dioxide per day into the atmosphere. This amount of sulphur dioxide is the chemical equivalent of almost ten tons of sulphuric acid per day. I don't know who has allowed them and I wonder if they are competent to know what they are doing, but they are allowed to burn 35 thousand tons of alternative fuel that includes plastic, shredded tires and textiles. They are allowed to burn 160,000 tons of petcoke, 258,000 tons of lignite, which is the lowest quality coal, 534 tons of coal. And there is no defined quality for entry into the plant for any fuel," said Kavrakov, calling on the Ministry of Environment and Physical Planning to adhere to due diligence in permit approval decisions. 

Participants in the protest demanded that USJE be a socially responsible company and allow round-the-clock publicly available and independent monitoring directly from the cement plant's chimneys, because failure to do so, protesters noted, would heighten public distrust and invite suspicion.  

Photo: MIA