Parents and staff of the private kindergarten “Secret Garden” situated in Râșcani district of Chisinau, near which a building has been erected for over a year, asked to demolish the construction and to protect the security and health of children who attend the preschool education institution.

In a news conference at IPN, lawyer Andrei Lungu said that initially the Technical Surveillance Agency suspended the building works by its prescriptions and requested the Chisinau City Hall to annul the building permit as this was issued with violations. But the Agency’s prescriptions were invalidated at the request of the building company. “Judge Alexei Paneș decided that while the legality of the documents issued by the Technical Surveillance Agency is being determined, the works can continue without any problem. In these disputes, the superior interests of the children were fully neglected,” stated the lawyer.

So far, all the approaches made by the education institution to obtain the suspension of the building works were rejected. The trial is delayed. Meanwhile, the building under construction reached its tenth floor. “We should witness a tragedy first for the observance of the building norms to start to be discussed. But our children face a danger of death,” said Andrei Lungu.

Tatiana Balan, methodologist at the kindergarten “Secret Garden”, said that this building would have caused only “temporary discomfort”, as the building company’s jurists said, if the minimum required distance of 12 meters had been respected. But at a distance of nearly two meters from the kindergarten’s fence, this building poses a real threat to the life and security of children.

“The full indifference, negligence and corruption can kill. We do not want tragedies. We want to work in safety and to focus on the work we started 14 years ago, without risks to the security and health of children and members of our team,” stated Tatiana Balan.

Addressing the authorities, the kindergarten’s manager Valeriu Guzun said that when the ‘illegally erected concrete monster’ is demolished, the institution will prove that the law is for everyone and the legal distance of 12 meters should be respected.

Efrosinia Guzun, founder of the kindergarten and mother of a child who attends this institution, said the developments are unacceptable. To stop protesting against the building works, the company’s managers offered her €20,000 to lay out the kindergarten’s territory. When she refused to take the money, she was told that only the prosecutors and judges will gain as a result of this struggle.

Representatives of the kindergarten insist that the health and life of the children attending the kindergarten is in danger. They referred to the an incident that happened in mid-March, when an iron bar felt from an upper floors of the building and damaged a wooden cage intended for rabbits placed in the yard of the kindergarten. No one was in the yard at that moment and a tragedy was this way avoided.

Note: IPN News Agency gives the right of reply to persons who consider they were touched by the news items produced based on statements of the organizers of the given news conference, including by facilitating the organization of another news conference in similar conditions.