Serbia's Vucic: Cooperation with Japanese agency for reducing air pollution

As the Government, Vucic also tried to explain that the pollution was not so dangerous as the public and especially media presented.

Admitting it was a real problem, Vucic mentioned protests against the building of mini-hydropower plants," as "one of the green energy source," referring to rallies in a Serbia's village that preventeda private investor from constructing a mini-hydropower plant which, they said, would have deprived them of necessary water.

 Vucic said that cooperation with the Japanese agency would "dramatically" contribute to the solving of the air pollution problem.

The agency deals with flue-gas desulphurisation (FGD), a set of technologies used to remove sulfur dioxide. As of June 1973, there were 42 FGD units in operation, 36 in Japan and 6 in the United States, ranging in capacity from 5 MW to 250 MW.

"It is important to work on desulphurisation everywhere, to switch to green energy. The sulfur dioxide is the largest problem, and we are now looking how to solve that," Vucic told the Prva TV morning programme.

"The real problem exists and should not be neglected. But, yesterday we had the same quantity of those particles (PM 2.5 and PM 10) as Milan, one of the most developed cities in Italy," Vucic said.

 He reiterated what the Government and Environment Ministry said that the pollution was caused by the living standard and increased traffic with "Euro 3 and Euro 4 engines."

Speaking about the AirViasual, the world-wide application for monitoring air pollution, Vucic said that in Serbia it measured most polluted places, while in Croatia the least polluted areas.

Belgrade and some other cities in Serbia have been among the worst polluted places in the world in the last several weeks, according to AirVisual measurement. 

"My children live in the most populated part of Serbia, in New Belgrade. The situation was worse when I was a child," the President said.