The results of the public health institute's emergency testing of Gostivar's water are ready - and they show deviations from normal parameters. Deviations that, as it's discreetly put, „match the current situation in the city". And the current situation in the city is an epidemic: hundreds of residents each day with stomach complaints, diarrhoea and vomiting, the paediatric ward and the infectious diseases unit overflowing, and the water banned for any use at all.

The exact figures from the analysis aren't public yet - the Public Prosecutor's Office insisted the results reach them first, after which an expert assessment will follow that must legally establish whether the contested water even reached residents' taps at all. The samples were taken by the strictest standards - those for „drinking water".

A pump that was injecting the Vardar into the mains

And here the story stops being about microbes and becomes about the people who made the decisions. According to the opposition, the inspection established that an illegal pump had been installed in the main water pipeline, injecting water straight from the Vardar river into the supply system. If that is confirmed, we're talking about a conscious decision, not a natural disaster.

One more detail says a lot about the mood: when the institute's crew arrived on site to take samples, they ran into pressure - a group of people wouldn't let them collect them. The samples finally made it into the machines at four in the morning, even though the team had been there since the evening before.

Declared late, the accusations fly

The opposition claims the epidemic didn't erupt overnight - that warning signs and an unusually high number of patients had been there for days, and the declaration came only after clinics and hospitals were overwhelmed and the number of the sick had reached nearly two thousand. On the other side, the local government and ruling parties fire back with their own accusations, while Vredi has announced 50,000 litres of free drinking water for as long as the measures last.

Beneath the party statements sits one non-political question: how, in a city in 2026, can water flow from a tap that sends two thousand people to the doctor? Who switched on that pump, who knew and stayed silent, and when did the institutions have enough information to act - and didn't. The answer now rests with the prosecution. Gostivar's residents, meanwhile, are queuing for a bottle of water, in their own city.