Opponents Of Battery Plant Construction Near Brest Preparing Local Referendum

34 thousand signatures have already been collected against the construction of a battery plant near Brest.

Residents of the city and nearby areas are afraid of the potentially dangerous emissions, and the authorities do not see a problem in this. The Brest residents are told that the plant will be built, the website of the Belsat television channel writes.

A negative answer was received to the people's appeal to the Brest City Executive Committee demanding that a meeting with representatives of district, city and regional authorities should be organized at the city's territory to discuss the situation surrounding the construction of the plant. Also, a large group of indifferent persons appealed to the Brest Regional Executive Committee with various proposals, in particular, offered to stop construction. The Regional Executive Committee responded that there were no grounds for this.

Human rights activist Raman Kislyak commented upon the process of the campaign against the construction of the plant for Belsat.eu:

"I think that there has been no proper public discussion, the residents of Brest were fully excluded from this process, they had no opportunity to learn about this construction, and residents of the Brest region were informed in such a way that they knew about the construction only after it had started. I think that we will defend our right to a clean environment and will not allow this plant to appear. "

Now initiative groups write letters to various instances, prepare an appeal to the administration of Lukashenka and continue to collect signatures. And some groups of citizens set as their goal the organization of a local referendum, where it is proposed to decide whether Brest needs such an enterprise. However, the activists have not yet invented the mechanisms to achieve this. There have been no precedents with local referendums in Belarus yet.