FIRST AID FROM NIŠ: Water Tankers Arrive for Over a Thousand Cows and Horses on Suva Planina! (VIDEO)

Water tankers have just arrived at the watering holes on Suva Planina, where about a thousand cows and 300 horses have been grazing without a drop of water since last Saturday, sources from Danas confirmed.

The tankers arrived from Niš.

“Four water tankers were sent by Niš’s public utility company JKP Mediana, by agreement between the Mayor of Niš (Dragoslav Pavlović) and the President of Gadžin Han municipality (Milisav Filipović),” Jovica Miljković, president of the Mali Krčimir local community, told Danas.

JKP Mediana confirmed that their water tankers are en route to Suva Planina, though they stated there were three. Livestock farmers from Suva Planina had previously said that tankers are only a temporary solution to this long-standing problem.

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Ministry: Water Tankers Provided, Animals Saved

The Minister of Agriculture, Forestry, and Water Management, Prof. Dr. Dragan Glamočić, immediately upon learning that there was a water shortage in the Suva Planina area and that animals were endangered, ordered urgent intervention, according to the Ministry’s website.

“For the next 15 days, we will send four tankers with drinking water daily to ensure sufficient quantities for livestock. We are working in coordination with the Ministry, local self-governments, and farmers on the ground,” emphasized Srećko Vukašinović, director of PSSS Niš.

It is also added that, in the shortest possible time, the Ministry, in cooperation with regional agricultural advisory and expert services (PSSS), secured tankers with drinking water and dispatched them to the field.

“This is direct and concrete support from the Ministry to our livestock farmers, who found themselves in a very difficult situation due to water shortages during the summer months,” the statement highlights.

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Farmers’ Long-Standing Struggle

Previously, as Danas reports, neither the relevant Ministry of Agriculture nor the municipalities of Gadžin Han and Bela Palanka, whose territory the mountain and animals are located, nor the Serbian Army, which had previously delivered tankers, had publicly responded to warnings that the situation was dramatic and pleas for water tankers, which last filled the reservoirs on Suva Planina last Saturday.

Nikola Manojlović, a livestock farmer from the village of Mali Krčimir, previously told Danas that more than ten days ago, they wrote to the Ministry of Agriculture through the Association of Livestock Farmers, warning of the dramatic situation, but received no response.

“They have been promising us for years that the problem will be permanently solved, but these are all false promises. Because of this, we farmers tried to solve it ourselves this spring, and we drilled three 100-meter boreholes to reach water, but unfortunately, we didn’t find any,” he said.

Our interlocutor also stated that the municipality of Gadžin Han informed them that it lacks the funds to solve the problem of animal thirst on Stara Planina. In this municipality, incidentally, more than 30 villages also lack water, which led to the declaration of a state of emergency.

In the municipality of Bela Palanka, they are “completely uninterested in the problems we have,” Manojlović adds.

According to livestock farmers, and some experts, a permanent solution could be digging wells and capturing water sources, so that livestock could drink there during the dry summer.

The problem of thirst for cows and horses on Suva Planina, from which these animals die, is most dramatic when the Rakoš spring, the largest in that part of the mountain, dries up, leaving three large concrete basins that collect water from the spring, and from which animals drink, empty.