The government sets up a waste agency without solving the collapse of incinerators

2024-03-08 08:21:00, Aktualitet CNA

The government sets up a waste agency without solving the collapse of

The Council of Ministers decided on Wednesday to establish the National Waste Economy Agency – a structure under the Ministry of Tourism and Environment with a coordinating and monitoring function in the integrated management of waste through the circular economy, which aims to promote source separation and recycling.

The establishment of the Agency appears to mark a turning point in the government's 10-year waste management strategy through contracts worth hundreds of millions of euros for the construction of incinerators, which are being investigated for corruption and money laundering by the Special Prosecutor's Office.

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Jorida Tabaku, deputy of the Democratic Party, told BIRN that the establishment of the Agency seems to be related to German donor funds for the establishment of several regional landfills, with the aim of recycling urban waste.

"I hope it has nothing to do with the incinerators," said Tabaku, while adding that the government should also clarify where the public money that was used for the incinerators went, which are not working or have not been erected at all as in the case of Tirana.

"The creation of this agency shows exactly this; that the incinerators for which 430 million euros were committed and 160 million were paid for 3 incinerators that do not work, are already changing it in another direction," added Tabaku.

After the explosion of the incinerator affair and the punishments against the former Minister of the Environment, Lefter Koka, the former socialist deputy, Alqi Blako and dozens of other officials, the government played table tennis with the authority responsible for managing the waste infrastructure.

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In November last year, this responsibility was transferred to the National Water and Sewerage Agency, which also oversaw the incinerator concession contracts.

For environmental experts, the establishment of this agency serves the management of foreign funds that are given for this purpose, without providing a solution to waste management and the question of what happens to the incinerators that do not work.

Ornela Çuçi, environmental expert and former deputy minister responsible for this sector, told BIRN that the creation of the agency, as formulated in the VKM, does not solve the problem of waste management.

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She explained that the waste sector operates through 5 links, which are still not connected to each other; policy system, standard setting related to strategies, master plan, infrastructure, operation and monitoring.

"There is no central entity to manage the waste situation from A to ZH and it becomes an agency to mentor some projects," Çuçi told BIRN.

"The whole system is on the verge of collapse" - she added, while raising the question that it is still unclear who will manage the final waste management facilities, which are recognized as facilities of national importance based on the national master plan.

Even the environmental expert, Rodion Gjoka, told BIRN that it seems that the establishment of the agency has to do with some request from donor programs that receive financial support from the Ministry of Environment.