Although the Albanian government, headed by Edi Rama, is only considering the requests for the construction of SHP at Cijevna, he already knows that there is no license.
Therefore, the Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy of Albania did not consider it necessary to inform the Montenegrin colleagues about the works.
"From the project feasibility study, works and technical solutions offered by the authors of these projects, there is no expected impact on reducing watercourses that go through the territory of Montenegro," they said as a response. In the Albanian part of Cijevna, works on the construction of only one SHP are very much in progress and "Vijesti" was convinced of this yesterday. Obviously, it was not a very friendly mood of those who, of course, was in charge of the supervision. I guess - because the entire length of the Cijevna riverbed where the works are being performed, it is impossible to get any information about it, as there is no table to provide information about the project and the contractor. On the highway behind Tamara, where one of the dams is being built, the road was covered with fine stones which the workers removed yesterday with improvised brooms made of branches. Reporters were denied the answer as to whether the mining field is concerned. There was no signaling that would inform the drivers if there might have been any landslides on this part of the route.
Construction of several SHPs are planned at Cijevna Na PHOTO: Damira Kalač
Noticing it is a journalist team and that they are recording the works on Cijevna, two men with a private vehicle wearing Albanian plates stopped and, in the Albanian language, asked the “Vijesti” reporter to turn off the cameras.
That the journalists were not welcomed was obvious. The hostile atmosphere of the contractor, according to information from "Vijesti", is also conducted towards the villagers of the surrounding areas in the region of Keljmendi, where there is a planned construction of several SHPs. Sources of "Vijesti" say that because of the riots, some of the villagers were arrested, among them are those who, due to the construction of SHP, have lost their property.
About the situation due to the construction of the SHP at Cijevna, the public has recently been alerted by Martina Volf, speaking at the first European River Summit, which was held in Sarajevo in late September. Wolf, an anthropologist and humanitarian worker from Strasbourg, has lived and worked for decades in Albania. "There are HPs here that were built before 1990. But one new SHP, without the consent of the local population and the approval of local authorities, was recently built in Selce. One is being built in Tamara where the river Cijevna has already been "trapped" in a three-kilometer long pipe," Volf said, announcing the construction of a few more SHP. She added that the concession for the SHPs was signed by the local government in Koplik, which, according to the 2011 census, has about 3,700 inhabitants. Volf claims that any of the locals were neither consulted nor had information on the plans for the construction of the SHP at Cijevna in that part of Albania. She also said that, according to the Internet data, there are six licenses issued for SHPs at Cijevna but that they plan to build 14 of them. "The construction of SHPs at Cijevna must be banned," Volf said. "The government, local and the state level, when it comes to SHP, manipulates and puts pressure on all citizens who show any form of resistance," she added. The Montenegrin Prime Minister Dusko Markovic said that he will speak with his Albanian colleague Edi Rama during the Economic Forum in Budva on October 25th. The state has requested information from Albania related to the SHP construction at Cijevna.
There were also Montenegrins in Sarajevo, but they did not hear Volf's speech
The European River Summit, where Volf talked about the projects at Cijevna, was attended by representatives of several ecological organizations from Montenegro. Among them, the Bird Protection and Research Center informed the public about this knowledge. The Canyon of Cijevna in Montenegro was declared last year as a monument of nature and protected zone of II category.
Text by Damira Kalac, on October 12th, 2018, read more at Vijesti
