Construction Minister, Ivan Paladina, and Zagreb Mayor, Tomislav Tomasevic, on Monday held their first meeting in which they discussed the reconstruction of buildings in Zagreb damaged in the March 2020 quake, state agency Hina said.

Paladina and Tomasevic agreed to hold regular meetings between city and ministry officials, to be held on Fridays.

Describing today’s meeting as “very concrete” and “in the spirit of cooperation,” Paladina said that their goal was for every new meeting to help resolve some of the topics discussed. He noted that “citizens were definitely unhappy with the pace of reconstruction” but that he would do his best to facilitate the process, and that work was being launched on a larger number of projects.

Paladina was picked by Prime Minister, Andrej Plenkovic, to replace his predecessor, Darko Horvat, who resigned after he had been detained last month in a graft probe. His appointment was confirmed in Parliament last week, where he told lawmakers that he would focus on spurring reconstruction efforts related to the March 2020 quake that hit Zagreb and the December 2020 quake that hit central Croatia around the town of Petrinja.

“Construction work on several buildings begins in April and design work is underway on 30 buildings. Tenders for contractors will be published in the coming months,” Paladina said, announcing that the construction of a substitute house and the seismic retrofitting of the first apartment building would begin in April.

Paladina said that in the coming period reconstruction-related activities would definitely be stepped up and that concrete changes would be presented in mid-April, noting that currently work was underway on resolving individual issues related to public procurement and the dynamic of certain procedures.

Mayor: Nobody can be satisfied with current pace of reconstruction

Mayor Tomasevic said that the meeting was attended by a broad range of officials as they wanted to strategically define certain topics to be dealt with operationally by a broad circle of people from different city offices and ministries.

He said the topics discussed were the current pace of reconstruction, absorption of money from the EU Solidarity Fund for the reconstruction of public buildings, notably in light of the fact that the deadline for absorption should be extended, temporary accommodation for citizens whose properties are to undergo seismic retrofitting, and a construction waste depot, to be located near the city wastewater processing plant.

Tomasevic repeated that nobody could be satisfied with the current pace of reconstruction, noting that in 2021 the city secured around 80 million kuna (€10.6 million) for the co-financing of reconstruction work on private buildings, of which almost none has been spent so far, while this year, 160 million kuna (€21 million) has been ‘optimistically’ secured.

Tomasevic said that the start of reconstruction work on houses had been shifted to April due to problems with public procurement, expressing hope that decisions would be made and implemented faster.

(€1 = 7.56 kuna)