FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
Referring to the responses received from 22 municipalities in the country, over the past year they have spent around 57 million euros on cleaning up their cities, but waste is everywhere.
Thus, at the top of the list is the Municipality of Tirana, the largest in the country, which says that during the years 2020-2024 it has spent 13 billion lek or 130 million euros, with an average of 26 million euros per year. For the same period, the Municipality of Tirana collected 100 million euros from the cleaning tax, while the rest was supported by the state budget.
The Municipality of Durrës also spent 10 million euros on the cleanup during 2024, of which 7.5 million euros were provided from its own revenues, while the rest was injected from the state budget. This municipality told “Inside Story” that it inherited 4 existing landfills from the territorial division, exceeding capacity and becoming an environmental problem. Of these, only Porto Romano has been rehabilitated, while the others are still vacant.
This is the abandoned Grykë-Minerës landfill in Manëz. As can be seen from the images, the waste has been covered with soil, but the problem has not been solved. This municipality says that it has just signed a contract with the Sharra landfill, which will receive all municipal urban waste for treatment.
This takes a safe step towards completing the solution to the waste treatment aspect, definitively excluding the possibility of using three other existing landfills, including Grykë-Minierë Manëz. Work will be done to establish a transfer station and at the same time to rehabilitate three existing landfills.
Despite the high costs of cleaning up the area, an audit by the Supreme State Audit Office in 2024 exposed the financial crisis facing the four monitored municipalities: Vlora, Korça, Shkodra and Durrës. The situation was most worrying in Durrës, where the Supreme State Audit Office found that around 30% of the budget of the Municipality of Durrës goes to urban waste management. According to the United Nations, this indicator should be at the level of 3-15% of the budget. According to data from the Municipality of Durrës, despite the high costs, around half of the budget goes to salaries and employee insurance.
"The government spends money on the environment, but a good part is operational expenses, not capital. It seems like we spend a lot, but when you start analyzing where this money goes, you see that a good part goes to employee salaries, a lot to tourism, we produce a lot of documents, a lot of paperwork, and the money goes to these paperwork and not to investment in the field," said Klodian Muço, associate professor of political economy.
The Municipality of Shijak is also struggling with waste management. To hide its failure, the municipality dumps its waste near the village of Hardishte, a recently created illegal landfill. The municipality did not respond to “Inside Story”’s inquiries regarding the waste management situation. /Inside Story
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