Molpresa Grup SRL calls on the municipal authorities to take urgent measures to ensure the continuity of the distribution of periodic press in Chisinau. In a news conference at IPN on February 20, the company’s managers said the district head’s offices, on the pretext of working out a new conception for the work of retail outlets, refuse to extend the period of validity of the authorizations and started to remove the kiosks selling newspapers and periodicals.

Molpresa Grup SRL director Viorel Filimon said he does not want to believe that by such actions, the local authorities intentionally place obstacles so as to eliminate the distribution of periodicals. The consumer’s right to choose by oneself the source of information cannot be encroached upon by an institution or a person. “Only by support, democratic conditions and informing that should be for the benefit of the people, we can create conditions for the citizens to choose themselves the source and method of obtaining informing,” stated the director.

The company’s vice director Adrian Racu said the authorities do not support the efforts to correctly and equidistantly inform the population from a number of sources. Approaches were made to obtain an exception for the kiosks that distribute newspapers, but the results are not favorable.

Vice director Igor Blanari said the steps taken by the district head’s offices to remove the kiosks by force represent attacks on the institutions that distribute newspapers and on the press in general. “We can no longer find newspapers on the central arteries or on the secondary streets of Chisinau,” he noted.

The managers of Moldpresa Grup SRL said that if measures are not taken, the print media will disappear and Article 32 of the Constitution (Freedom of opinion and expression) will lose sense.