The blame game: who is to blame for the trash not having been immediately taken cared of?
The crew of the tourist sailboat “Gradina 1” has unloaded trash bags, which were ‘baking’ in the sun for two whole days, first along the promenade, then by the road near Obala kneza Domagoja street, without notifying anyone, reports Pomorac.net on October 15, 2017.
Ljubica Vrdoljak, head of the “Čistoća” Operations Service, claims that the Port Authority, which is in charge of organizing ship waste disposal, did not inform them about this problem, which is a standard practice mutually agreed upon in order to avoid similar situations. Not only did they not contact them, the employees of this state institution had moved the garbage from the port area to the public area, she adds.
“According to the contract we have with the Port Authority, we are in charge of placing a container on St. Nicholas Pier on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, while on every other day we collect the waste from tourist ships when notified (on their arrival) directly from their vessel into our specialized vehicle. I mean, you cannot dump garbage wherever you please! And this is not the first time this has happened. The worst of all, some kind of vegetable oil has poured out of these garbage bags, so it looks (and smells) awful,” says Vrdoljak bitterly, adding that the communal officers were also informed about it.
However, captain Vjekoslav Grgić, Chief of Operations at the Port Authority, says that the ship’s crew is fully responsible and solely to blame for the trash having been left on the coast without informing anyone about it.
“The case was immediately reported to the Harbormasters office, and we removed the garbage bags on Thursday and washed out both surfaces with detergent and warm water which were provided by the Almissa sailboat. We have done our work without any problems for the entirety of the tourist season. We had 72 tourist boats moored [at the time] and we cannot always be the ‘cops’ patrolling around the port and knowing when somebody will take their trash out. The crew is obliged to report either to us or to the “Čistoća”, but this procedure has not been followed,” Grgić says adding that another similar incident happened a few days ago when the “Captain of the World” ship similarly disposed of their waste without notifying the responsible authorities.
Translated from Pomorac.net
