State of emergency in Montenegro: Save energy, remove snow, and forward emergency requests to authorities

Podgorica, Montenegro (12 February 2012) – The state of emergency has been declared in Montenegro late yesterday evening due to severe weather conditions in most parts of the country.

Pursuant to the decision of the Security and Defence Council on the state of emergency, the Emergency Management Coordination Team, tasked to manage the protection and rescue during a state of an emergency, has passed directions signed by Prime Minister Igor Lukšić, the Team administrator.

The directions include:

• Equipment and means necessary for protection and rescue shall be acquired by the Operation Headquarters for Emergency Management upon the consent of the Emergency Management Coordination Team.
• Municipality mayors and presidents shall consider and decide, if necessary, on closing the traffic in city centres and local roads for all types of vehicles, save for medical, road safety, Red Cross, Military, police, official vehicles involved in emergency management, EPCG, diplomatic, food delivery, public transport, and taxi vehicles; they shall also ensure rational electricity use, and request the mandatory shutting down of public lighting, road billboards, store windows and other similar electricity spenders.
• It is prohibited to visit the patients at the Clinical Centre of Montenegro, general and specialised hospitals in the country.
• The KAP aluminium smelter, Podgorica and the Željezara iron smelter, Nikšić shall reduce their electricity use by at least 20%.
• All public institutions and public and private companies shall ensure a more rational electricity use.
• Electricity authority EPCG shall ensure the implementation of the measures related to electricity efficiency and shall notify the Operation Headquarters for Emergency Management on the progress every three hours and if needed sooner.
• Citizens are asked to contribute by rationally using the electric power.
• Municipality teams for emergency management shall immediately put all available machinery and manpower at the disposal of the Operation Headquarters for employment on the adopted priority tasks.

In addition, the Public Relations Bureau of the Government asks the media to honour the following requests.

Pursuant to Article 52 of the Law on Electronic Media, we ask of all electronic media in Montenegro to broadcast these directions hourly as part of their regular schedules.

We ask the media to forward to the Operation Headquarters for Emergency Management without exception and immediately any requests from the citizens from endangered areas to ensure the timely response by the specialised teams. The phone numbers are: 020 481 801 and 067 911 2042.

The media is also asked to promote the directions and recommendations to citizens to save electric energy and remove snow so as to alleviate the negative effects of severe weather.