Today, MANS urged the Government of Montenegro to withdraw the draft plan for the National Park Skadar Lake from the parliamentary procedure because it still leaves the possibility of construction of the project “Porto Skadar Lake”, despite the fact that are no more legal bases for further keeping of this project within the plan.
A sitting of the Parliament of Montenegro is scheduled for Friday, September 28, where the MPs should discuss the Proposal of the Special Purpose Spatial Plan for the National Park Skadar Lake, which contains a conditional consent for the continuation of the construction of this project according to already defined deadlines.
Let us remind that MANS Investigative Centre has determined that the urban and technical conditions for the construction of an eco-tourist complex in the heart of the National Park contain a letter from Cetinje Electric Power Distribution, stating that “conditions in terms of the electricity plan are not acceptable” which makes them illegal. However, despite such conditions, in March 2015, the Ministry of Sustainable Development and Tourism (MSDT) issued a construction permit to the investor.
Considering that the previous planning document “DSL Mihailovići” stipulated that “the investor has three years to acquire a construction permit”, and that the deadline expired in October last year, the cancellation of the currently valid and illegal construction permit would create conditions to delete the project from the plan, both old one and proposal of the new one.
Therefore, MANS today submitted an initiative to the competent inspection with the request to apply the measures within its competence and prohibit the use of urban and technical conditions and propose to MSDT the cancellation of the construction permit for “Porto Skadar Lake”.
For these reasons, we urge the MPs not to vote for the plan, to protect the public interest and wait for other state institutions to carry out tasks within their competence. This means that conditional consent for the construction of a megalomaniac project must be erased from the proposal of the new plan, and the space in the heart of the national park should become completely protected from mass construction and damage to the environment.
MANS
Lazar Grdinić
