Prishtinë, April 11, 2019

The Ombudsperson, within the scope of exercising his legal powers and responsibilities, today has published a Report with Recommendations, Ex officio No. 479/2017, related to inappropriate management of sanitary waste landfill in village Velekincë of Gjilan Municipality.

The Report recognizes problems such as the failure to keep the landfill under control, easy access of unauthorized persons, commonly of children and minors within the landfill, who without any means of protection, at the time of discharging the waste from garbage trucks, remain close to the trash trucks, risking in this way their lives. The Report points out that the failure to establish control of a waste landfill by the operator, failure to establish appropriate fence that would hinder entrance of unauthorized persons, indicates that the landfill is not being managed in accordance with the applicable legal provisions, breaching in this way the right to a safe and healthy environment for citizens, followed, as recently identified, with life losses as a result of the given situation.

The Inspectorate of the Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning as well as the Municipal Inspectorate, despite sufficient legal bases and serious problems recorded, have failed to undertake measures in compliance with legislation at force, to command the waste landfill management company to fix the irregularities or ban its activity.

Through this Report the Ombudsperson addressed recommendations to the Municipality of Gjilan, Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning and the Kosovo Waste Management Company (KWMC) SH:A and that,:

1. Municipality of Gjilan, in compliance with the Law No. 04/L-060 on Waste and through Municipal Inspectorate for Environment, to monitor and control the impact of waste into environment;
2. Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning and the Municipality of Gjilan, in compliance with responsibilities and legal powers, as well as in cooperation with other bodies, undertake immediate measures for solving the problem of sanitary waste landfill in village Veleknicë and protection of environment and human health from inappropriate waste disposal;
3. Kosovo Waste Management Company (KWMC) SH:A, in accordance with its powers, to undertake necessary actions for management of sanitary waste landfill in village Velekincë and implement Action Plan for removing of unauthorized persons from the landfill.

This Recommendation report was delivered to relevant authorities and the same has been disseminated to media as well as published on official Ombudsperson Institution web-page.