As temperatures climb toward 39 degrees, the question of where a citizen can drink free water becomes entirely practical. Of the 11 public drinking fountains in Centar municipality, nine are fully working and the other two are being repaired, mayor Goran Gerasimovski announced.

„Our goal is to secure access to drinking water in this hot period, to keep watering the greenery and to guarantee proper hygiene,“ Gerasimovski said. According to him, over the recent period seven old fountains were replaced with new ones made of stainless steel, and water meters were installed on all of them. A new fountain is going up on Orce Nikolov Street, where the previous one was out of order.

The municipality set aside three million denars for maintenance and repairs, of which 998,752 denars have been spent so far. Numbers that sound concrete - and concreteness is a welcome change from the usual vague statements about „care for citizens.“

A public fountain is one of those small things we only notice when they stop working - at 38 degrees, with a dry throat, standing in front of a fountain that doesn't run. So nine working out of eleven is not a bad number. It remains to be seen whether the two under repair will be finished before the heatwave peaks, or whether they will join the long list of things that are „in progress“ while the summer slips by.