FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
Millions continue to be wasted on waste
In March 2024, the government created the National Waste Management Agency, which it placed under the Ministry of Tourism and Environment. An agency that "emerged" after the failure of waste policies across the country, especially the incinerators in Tirana, Elbasan, and Fier.
The role of this agency is to coordinate central and local institutions, with international partners, investors and stakeholders for the implementation of management. It should also be taken to favor the recycling and recovery of waste.
In short, it is preparing projects for private companies to take over the waste and in return they will be reimbursed. An indirect concession method, where there are always huge costs to the state budget and to the environment where these sites are located.
One of Fier's biggest problems was waste. It was deposited in a very populated area and in a huge neighborhood at the entrance to the city, in Sheq. Everyone who passed by on the street could smell the very heavy smell, while there was also no shortage of fires.
The garbage was then moved to the village of Verri, in the Fier region, where the local residents welcomed them with protests. An incinerator was built there, where the proceedings have been under investigation and trial in SPAK and the Special Court. Several officials have been charged.
And, in this whole situation, the "salvation" will come from the National Waste Economic Agency?! This Agency, according to documents available to VoxNews, has opened a tender with the object of "project drafting". It is about a "project for the design of investments in the Fier Waste Zone". There is no further information about this tender, except for the fund limit of 77,723,561 lek.
So an amount of 800 thousand euros will be used for design! What should the firm or private company that wins this tender do? Should it make a project for garbage? But where have the millions that have been poured so far gone?
Simultaneously with the tender in Fier, the same Agency has also opened the project for "designing investments in the waste area in Elbasan". Again a problem with garbage, where the incinerator and landfill do not function. Tons of garbage end up in the Shkumbin River, where time and again, the waste field catches fire. The value of the tender in Elbasan reaches the figure of 80,487,832 lek.
For both procedures, the state provides an amount of more than 1.6 million euros just to design them. But if it creates an Agency that will regulate the early problems of waste, why doesn't the state itself do these projects? Our officials are so incompetent that after failing once, twice or three times for waste, they again make tenders and give money.
It seems that the story of waste will never end in Albania, reminding us of the scenes in the Italian countryside in the 1990s. In Italy, the mafia got its hands in, while in Albania, the state has deeply "involved".
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