Veles protests against smelting factory restart

Today, on 9th of November 2011 the citizens of Veles and their friends have clearly shown their opinion about the possible restart of the lead smelting factory. Massively supporting the protest scheduled at 17:00 today, the families, school children and elders joined forces. Being there I saw people from all backgrounds - the non-governmental sector, doctors, blue collar workers, politicians including former and current mayors and members of the parliement and local council, mothers and daughters, from all ranges of age, social and ethnic background. They protested in unison, NO RESTART! for the smelting factory.

I was never good at guessing numbers, but the group of NGO's called "Green coalition" have managed to gather more participants than any party on a political rally even when they want to boast with numbers carrying people from other cities to enrich the scenery. Some guesses were in the range of 10.000 participants.

The organization was quite good, the people were loud but very polite, the whole process finished without any recorded incident. The protest was lead by an excavator, symbolic image of the vision of the citizens - to dig up the old shadow factory and plant the perimeter with trees in order to decontaminate the land from cancerogens and active chemicals that modify the DNA of the unborn children.

The message was clear and far-reaching - NO MORE POISONING! Now, the state should show its support for the locals not only by speeches and through columnists, but by clear actions. And the solution is simple - rejecting the application of the investor to restart the factory - which everyone is sure that must be done based on strict following of the environmental legislation. Even the investor has admitted that they will pollute in their environmental impact study submitted to the Ministry of environment of Republic of Macedonia (image of the table follows, and remember the fact - the author of this document is the investor itself):