Two persons were injured in a new garbage landslide at Zagreb's Jakusevec landfill, Hina learned on Monday from the police who were securing the site of the accident.

The latest garbage landslide, the second in less than a month, happened around 6.40 a.m. on Monday.

According to information available to the police, the two injured persons were given medical attention at the KBC Zagreb Hospital. The severity of their injuries is not known.

The Sajmisna road, which leads from Jakusevec to the west of the city has been closed to traffic.

After the first garbage landslide on 11 November Zagreb Mayor Tomislav Tomasevic said an analysis showed that the garbage landslide did not cause an increase in the concentration of gases or in any other way jeopardised citizens’ health as previously claimed by the opposition in the City Assembly.

Opposition demands inquiry

“The Jakusevec landfill is no longer a safe place for its workers and someone must answer for such a lack of responsibility,” said the Most party, demanding the dismissal of Cistoca director Davor Vic.

The party called for an on-site investigation to determine the stability of the landfill and shifts in its total weight.

“The accident happened due to disregard for the problem that all residents of Novi Zagreb are talking about because they have been affected by the unbearable stench from the landfill,” said the party, resenting Mayor Tomislav Tomasevic’s “having entirely ignored instructions by the opposition” after the first garbage landslide on 11 November.

“Since then he has not conducted inquiries to determine the cause of the first landslide or has been hiding the findings from the public,” the Zagreb branch of the party said.

Zagreb HSLS party branch leader Darko Klasic said at a news conference that nothing had changed over the past month in the manner of waste disposal and that sorted bio waste and ground bulk waste were still being disposed of at the same place.

“Today’s garbage landslide shows that Tomasevic and the city administration did not take the first landslide and its remediation seriously enough,” he said.

Klasic claims that the 2024 city budget does not include allocations for any of the major projects to build infrastructure that would solve the problem of waste management in Zagreb.

“Tomasevic and the Mozemo! party pursue their waste management policy in a merely declarative manner and Zagreb has become an embarrassment in the EU in terms of waste management,” said Klasić.

The Zagreb branch of the HDZ party said that the latest garbage landslide as well as the one that happened on 11 November were caused by the disposal of excessive quantities of sorted bio waste.

A member of parliament and leader of the Zagreb branch of the Social Democrats, Davor Bernardic, told reporters at Jakusevec that almost nothing was being done to solve the problem of waste management in Zagreb except that its residents “are being deceived with the blue waste bags.”

He said that in 2022 the operating licence for Jakusevec was extended until the end of 2025 and that it was visible from aerial recordings that there is not much free space left at the landfill for waste disposal.

Nothing is being done either in terms of building a composting plant for bio waste or a plant for waste sorting or a unit for the thermal treatment of waste, Bernardic said.

Pavao Barbaric, commissioner for the Novi Sindikat union of the Cistoca city sanitation company’s workers, today called on company director Davor Vic to resign due to the latest accident.