Mayor scolds flood-affected peasants for not lifting a finger

While carabinier troops work hard to reinforce dikes and floodbanks, the peasants look on passively or engage in leisure activities like fishing, Mihai Gribincea, the mayor of Antonesti village in Cantemir district, has told a press conference in Chisinau on Wednesday. “We shouldn't accuse the previous or the current government for the fact that hundreds of homes are flooded and thousands of people are in distress, for the fact that the disaster unleashed. The government is making multiple efforts to build levees, yet, sadly, those who deserve much of the reproach are the fellow peasants who won't lift a finger to help”, said the mayor. Mihai Gribincea says not a single business enterprise operating farms in the Prut lowland hasn't offered assistance for the construction of barriers. “We haven't learned the lesson of 2008 – when we saw similar floods – that we should join efforts to build. But that's how the Moldovan business is, people care only about themselves”. The mayor believes that the peasants will remain roofless until winter unless they contribute to the on-going construction works. At the same time, the mayor calls on both the ruling Alliance and the Communist opposition to team up for relief efforts. “The parties should leave ambitions aside and unite. The opposition should be constructive instead of pointing the blaming finger”. 180 houses were flooded in Leca village, near Antonesti. In Mihai Gribincea's village, a dike has been erected recently.