BEIRUT: The Cabinet finally approved Monday a controversial plan to manage the country’s solid waste after the strategy sparked sharp divisions among ministers and threatened to paralyze the government’s work.
Under the plan, the deadline for closing the notorious Naameh landfill, south of Beirut, which expires Saturday, will be extended for three months and can be renewed for another three months, Information Minister Ramzi Joreige told reporters after a five-hour special session chaired by Prime Minister Tammam Salam at the Grand Serail.
Two other contracts that were supposed to expire Saturday will be extended for the same period.
One with Sukleen, the company responsible for sweeping and cleaning streets in Beirut and Mount Lebanon and transferring garbage to Burj Hammoud and another one with Sukomi company which treats the wastes transferred to Burj Hammoud and delivers them to Naameh.
The approved plan, which seeks decentralization of waste management, divides Lebanon into six blocks: Beirut and its suburbs, the north and Akkar, the south and Nabatieh, the Bekaa Valley and Baalbek-Hermel, Baabda, Chouf, Aley and Jbeil, Metn and Kesrouan, Joreige said.
The Cabinet decided to confine the licensing of garbage collection to one contractor in two blocks at most under a seven-year contract that can be renewed for additional three years, Joreige said. He added that the Cabinet set the rules for the licensing of sweeping, garbage collection and landfills.Contractors who win the tenders should secure the locations of a landfill in each block, but if they fail to do so within a month, the Environment Ministry and the Council of Development and Reconstruction must secure them at the contractors’ expenses, Joreige said.
The Cabinet also decided to task the finance and environment ministries with launching the necessary tenders for the waste management plan within two months at the utmost, he said. The Cabinet decided to form a committee headed by the environment minister to assess all contracts for solid waste treatment.
The solid waste treatment plan, proposed by Environment Minister Mohammad Machnouk, had been opposed by the Kataeb Party’s ministers, who argued that it lacked transparency. However, the approved plan seemed to allay the their concerns. The party had demanded that the state must be the side making the decision about the locations of landfills throughout Lebanon.
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