In order to see tangible improvement of the air quality in Skopje in 2 to 3 years, bold and all-encompassing activities for solving the problem with air pollution are necessary, not just some minor assets from the budgets allocated each year for this purpose. The priority should be the decrease of the pollution with PM particles, and those that are most dangerous PM-1, PM 2,5 and then PM-10, say the civil activists and environmental associations that Meta.mk contacted after it published 2 articles about the air pollution in Skopje in the period from December 2020 to March 2021.
The civil society organization “O2 Initiative” said for Meta that the people of Skopje are breathing air that is dangerous to their health and for years the nuances in the air quality depend merely on the weather conditions. The O2 Initiative also states there has been no satisfactory improvement of the air quality in Skopje, since the limit of no more than 35 days in a year with air pollution above the allowed maximum – 50 mg/mp3 of PM10 particles – in Skopje is reached in the first several months of the year.
The environmental activist Gorjan Jovanovski who is also the creator of the “My Air” mobile application says that the weather conditions, and in the last two years also the COVID-19 pandemic, have had an influence on the air pollution and the numbers, although these factors cannot be found often in the reports and the press releases by the city and state authorities.
“Without seeing the complete picture, it is not possible to know whether we are really experienncing improvement of the air quality,” said Gorjan Jovanovski, who also states that in order to determine whether there was an increase or decrease of the air pollution in Skopje, we have to wait to see the annual average and only then can we make comparisons.
Yet, until today, the Ministry of Environment still hasn’t published the Annual Report for 2020, even though it’s end of April 2021 now. The only things available are the daily and monthly reports from the previous period.
