Croatia invested in islands more than 6 billion kuna in last 5 years

More than six billion kuna from national funds was invested in activities and projects on Croatian islands, from 2016 to 2020 as State Secretary at the Ministry of Regional Development Spomenka Đurić pointed out in the Croatian Parliament on Friday.

Đurić thus presented the amendments to the Law on Islands that will enable the islanders to increase the amount of water at a subsidized price, from 45 to 85 cubic meters.

Islanders who are not connected to the public water supply system and receive water by aquifers and tankers, will pay it at a price equal to that on the mainland from which the water is obtained.

This measure includes 4,234 island households or more than 7,200 islanders, for which HRK 17 million was paid last year.

Katica Glamuzina asks why innovative solutions such as the Water Saving Challenge, a manual made just for Croatian islands, are not being implemented? If we did that, we might not need to raise the number of subsidized cubic meters of water per islander and thus prolong their dependence on public money and solutions from the mainland, she said.

On the one hand, the law calls for the islands to be under special state protection, and on the other hand, this peculiarity is erased by the decision that the islands will no longer adopt their development plans, but will be adopted at the regional level, said Sandra Benčić. She believes that making joint plans for groups of islands that are further away from the mainland, without taking into account the specifics of each of them is not a good way.

Source: Morski.hr