15 March 2017
The Committee on Ecology and Natural Resources of Ingushetia has launched a special project called ‘For a Clean Ingushetia’. As part of the project, the authorities are asking people to covertly record people throwing rubbish in unauthorised places and to publish the recordings online. According to the authorities, this will radically decrease the number of people violating environmental laws.
‘This will allow us not only to bring these people to justice, but also to develop a general public condemnation of such actions! I urge all friends, bloggers, active inhabitants of our beautiful republic, to unite in a huge team to support this project’, head of the committee, Magomed Babkhoyev said.
One video has so far been published anonymously on Instagram. The video shows an elderly woman throwing a bag of rubbish from the stairs of a high building. The committee told OC Media that the woman may face ‘administrative consequences’.
The problem with unauthorised dumps in Ingushetia has a long history. In Malgobek District, residents of the village of Sredniye Achaluki often protest against having such a dump located near their village.
Ingushetia has declared 2017 the ‘Year of Ecology’. At the project’s official launch at the end of January, Ingush President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov noted the importance of increasing efforts to protect the environment.
‘A good relation with the world around us begins with the most usual act — to bend over and be the first to pick up the rubbish we see’, Yevkurov said.
Magomed Bobkhoyev was confident that ‘only such work to form ecological infrastructure, raising environmental awareness, and fostering respect for the surrounding nature, will help the region to reach a new level of environmental safety within one year’.
