site.btaVehicular Protest March Demanding Clean Air Blocks Danube Bridge

104 ENVIRONMENT-PROTEST AGAINST AIR POLLUTION

Vehicular Protest March
Demanding Clean Air
Blocks Danube Bridge


September 14 (BTA) - Rousse residents staged a vehicular protest march on Saturday demanding clean air in the city. The march blocked a roundabout on the road to the Danube Bridge connecting Rousse and Giurgiu in Romania, and caused long waiting lines.

The protesters had face masks and carried posters reading, "Stop gassing Rousse," "Rousse wants to breathe," "Dirty air kills", etc. They chanted "Clean air" and "Resign".

The protesters made demands to the institutions in charge for ambient air quality, asking their immediate enforcement. The demands are for new checks of all plants in the area which must look into whether money is saved which otherwise should go towards purification installations, for strict control of air pollution and stoppage of productions when such is established, for placing electronic displays with data from ongoing air monitoring, for weekly street washing, and for measures against air pollution from household heating with solid fuel.

One of the organizers of the rally, Galichka Nikolova, said that this is the latest such protest. "We breathe toxins from the production plants around Rousse. It is high time for the institutions to do their job and put and end to this," Nikolova said. IG/ZH//