Idrizovo is getting a sewage system - 1,478 metres of new network, a contract worth around 50 million denars, funded through the government's second public call. Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski inspected the first phase of construction, accompanied by Environment and Spatial Planning Minister Muamet Hoxha and the mayor of the Gazi Baba municipality, Boban Stefkovski.

The prime minister's statement on site was met with applause.

The figures that count

Set the ceremonial part aside and there are numbers here worth keeping. The Gazi Baba municipality, according to mayor Stefkovski, has so far built 36 kilometres of new sewage network - in Smilkovci, Crešovo, Stračinci and in several phases in Jurumleri and Goce Delčev. He also announced that funding is secured for the final phase in Jurumleri, with work starting in a few weeks.

Thirty-six kilometres of sewerage is not a trifle and not a photo op. It is infrastructure that either exists or does not, and every household connected to it feels the difference.

Minister Hoxha stressed that the project is of exceptional importance both for local residents and for the surrounding environment, describing it as a systemic solution that resolves problems permanently.

The figure that needs a second line under it

The prime minister took the opportunity to mention the overall scale as well: construction is currently under way at more than 1,200 sites across Macedonia. In his words, that not only keeps domestic contractors busy and signals stronger economic activity, but also shows that decades-old problems could have been solved.

This is where it is worth pausing. Twelve hundred building sites is an impressive number when spoken aloud. It becomes verifiable only when a second number stands beside it: how many of those 1,200 were completed on schedule, and how many are simply open and waiting.

Anyone living in this country knows the difference between those two states. A dug-up street is a building site whether anyone is working on it or not.

The question the project itself hides

The most telling detail in the whole story is not the length of the network, nor the sum. It is that in 2026, a settlement in the Gazi Baba municipality - ten minutes from the capital's centre - is only now getting a sewage system.

Mickoski said that once all these projects take shape, there will be significant added value for citizens' quality of life. That is true. The question is why that value is arriving fifty years late, and who held power through all those decades while Idrizovo waited.