The issue of household waste in Saïda is worsening in the absence of short and long-term solutions, in particular due to the interruption of payments due to contractors in charge of collection and treatment.
The IBC company, which operates the Saïda waste treatment center, said in a statement yesterday that it “would close its doors tomorrow (today Thursday) in protest against the non-payment of its dues by the government “. In the text, the company indicates that it expected the Council of Ministers held yesterday at the Grand Serail to address the issue of waste and the payment of arrears owed to it by the State.
And to add: “The company can no longer bear additional delays, which in turn cause delays in the payment of employees’ salaries. Not to mention the cost of maintaining the processing center. (…) She asks the State and the government to pay off their debts, which are for her an acquired right. »
Despite the publication of this press release, the president of the municipal council of Saïda Mohammad Saoudi told L’Orient-Le Jour that the strike would be postponed. “The company would have decided to wait, since the government has promised to look into the matter next week or the week after,” he says. The outgoing Council of Ministers, which met yesterday in a tense political climate, was only able to examine one urgent matter, that of electricity. The issue of payment of their dues to contractors in charge of waste collection and treatment, not only in Saïda but elsewhere, was on the agenda but was not addressed in time.
The management of IBC, however, denies the optimistic remarks of Mr. Saoudi. Questioned by our correspondent Mountasser Abdallah, Ahmad el-Sayed, general manager of IBC, confirms the closure of the center today. He assures that the company’s arrears are around 37 million dollars, 15 million since April 2022 and 12 million during the sixteen months that have just passed. He also reveals that during the last 16 months, the costs of the center have been covered at least by Saudi investors, in the absence of any state initiative, up to three million dollars. Promises of payment at the end of 2022 have remained a dead letter, even though the center needs 500 million Lebanese pounds every 10 days to pay workers and fuel bills, and maintenance costs $250,000 every month, still according to the director.
Mr. Sayed took over the center about ten months ago, and was “amazed” at how neglected it had been. He shows his desire to restore it. This center is equipped with sorting equipment which isolates organic waste with a view to composting it (transformation into compost, soil enricher). It should also generate 3.6 megawatts of electricity by recovering gases emitted by garbage, but this is not currently the case, according to him.
The closure of the center has a very negative impact on the city, which will once again be drowned in waste, confirms the director of IBC. Indeed, the landfill adjoining the center, and which should simply receive inert waste (those which are not treatable but which do not release gases and liquids, such as organic waste), will then have to receive all the detritus without any treatment. . Moreover, this is already partly the case: Mr. Sayed confirms that the center operates at slow speed, even when it is open, given the poor state of this equipment, and the fact that 500 tonnes of waste, even though it was designed to accommodate only 200. According to him, it would need 3 to 4 million dollars to be developed correctly.
Irregular collection
The issue of household waste worsens as time goes by in this city which has nevertheless equipped itself with a treatment center, which is extremely rare in Lebanon. According to our correspondent Mountasser Abdallah, both collection and processing are out of order. Indeed, the company that provided collection and cleaning in the city, NTCC, has ceased to do so, for lack of payment. Still according to our correspondent, the municipality has made an “arrangement” with this company, which stipulates that it carries out the collection in only a few districts, the others regularly suffering from the accumulation of rubbish.
This is what prompted a local association, “Development for People and Nature Association” (DPNA), on Tuesday to take the initiative to collect garbage in the city during a day of volunteering in which the minister also participated. of the Environment Nasser Yassine, and which was placed under the sponsorship of the president of the municipal council Mohammad Saoudi. Mr. Yassine estimated that “any long-term solution would require the proper functioning of the treatment center, the creation of a new sanitary landfill and the settlement of the financial question from which the city suffers”. He called on neighboring municipalities to facilitate the creation of a new landfill that would serve the region, the current one being visibly already saturated.
The issue of household waste in Saïda is worsening in the absence of short and long-term solutions, in particular due to the interruption of payments due to contractors in charge of collection and treatment. The IBC company, which operates the Saïda waste treatment centre, said in a statement yesterday that it “would close its doors tomorrow…