Criminal complaint against Sasho Klekovski: Gostivar drank poisoned water for 22 days while the prosecution stays silent

SDSM has filed a criminal complaint over the water poisoning in Gostivar, and in a statement in front of the Public Prosecutor's Office, Jon Frčkoski of the party described the entire episode as "a health disaster and a total collapse of the institutions". Nearly 5,000 citizens ended up in hospital, yet — as he stressed — no one has been held responsible so far.

"More than a month has passed, an entire city, Gostivar, was poisoned with contaminated water. Nearly 5,000 citizens ended up in hospital. A health disaster and a total collapse of the institutions. There has been no accountability from the government or from the health institutions. Literally from no one. And there is still no clean water in Gostivar," Frčkoski said.

The complaint, according to him, is not aimed at the local level alone. It covers four officials: the director of the Centre for Public Health in Tetovo, Shpend Ameti; the director of the Institute of Public Health, Marija Andonovska; the director of the State Sanitary and Health Inspectorate, Kiril Lazov; and the Health Minister in Mickoski's government, Sasho Klekovski. The accusation is that, as officials in the institutions they lead, they failed to take the actions and measures needed to protect public health and to prevent the consequences of the water contamination.

The harshest part of the complaint is the timeline. "The response was late as well. For 22 days the citizens of Gostivar drank poisonous water containing faeces. The Centre for Public Health even announced that the water was safe to drink," Frčkoski said. And while 200 citizens a day were reporting to health facilities with symptoms, no one did anything to establish the cause.

The declaration of an epidemic also came with a delay. "Information about the water was hidden from citizens; not a single analysis or report was ever published," Frčkoski pointed out, assessing that all these failures led to serious and severe consequences for the health of Gostivar residents.

He directed his sharpest sentence at the government: "For four weeks Mickoski's government has been toying with the most precious thing there is — people's health." And then he concluded: "There is no greater scandal, nor greater irresponsibility, than this kind of gambling with citizens' lives."

Frčkoski also opened a second front — towards the Public Prosecutor's Office. "The Public Prosecutor's Office is silent and ignores the calls to take concrete steps. We will not allow that. We will not allow all of this to be swept under the carpet," he said, calling on the prosecution to establish the facts and the evidence set out in the complaint. According to SDSM, the accountability must be both political and criminal, and the suspicions cover the period from June 2024 until today.

Photo: SDSM / video statement in front of the Public Prosecutor's Office