From the moment I stepped into the head of the capital, I tried to apply what I applied to New Belgrade as the mayor of the municipality, I will map to the level of the capital and set up five aspects of the policy - value, social, safety, infrastructure and environmental, and the highlight of the social policy is the introduction of free public transport from January 1, said the mayor of Belgrade Aleksandar Šapić.
Šapić told RTS that the biggest reform of public transport is underway and that there will be money for free public transport, which should motivate citizens not to drive their own vehicles to the city center.
"Some 200-300 vehicles have already arrived. We expect that by the end of the year we will only be talking about buses, that there will be 1200 new vehicles. When you see a blue bus, it means that it is not younger than December 2022, that is, it is not older than January 2023," said Šapić in a conversation with journalists Vesna Radosavljević and Maja Bojić.
"I have no problem with dialogue"
He added that he expects procurements for trams and electric buses to be announced during January and February, and referred to the opposition's criticism regarding trolleybuses, the abolition of which was announced and that the profession was not consulted about it.
"I wouldn't pay attention to them." Because whenever I ask them who you are, what you recommend and who are the people who criticize me, they overcome it," said Šapić and added that he "never had a problem with any common-sense proposal of the opposition".
He stated that he has no problem with dialogue or cooperating with the opposition, but that he will not talk to people who "are not interested in the truth" and "who try to make sense of everything that is meaningful".
"We are deploying state-of-the-art weapon detection software"
Šapć also stated that "there is no city in the region of this size that has all free kindergartens."
"At the moment, 65.000 children go to state kindergartens, plus 25.000 to private ones. "Since we raised the subsidy for private kindergartens to 33.000, another 3.000 children were enrolled in private kindergartens in the last year alone," Šapić said.
He also reminded about the free textbooks and the 20.000 student aid for compensation for textbooks, as well as the fact that during the summer all swimming pools were free for the citizens of Belgrade.
He stated that "one of the biggest security projects in Belgrade - the installation of video surveillance in all schoolyards and kindergartens" is underway.
"We are installing the most modern software, which is not available in this part of Europe, because it will detect both firearms and cold weapons, which will try to help the police." We will have our own, in addition to technical, physical support. So, our services that will come to kindergartens, schools and to patrol the parts of the city, not to scare someone, but to be a preventive aspect, to prevent something from happening, to help the Belgrade police," Šapić said.
Source: RTS
