The government's 'historic investment' leaves Mati drowning in garbage

During a visit to Burrel in October 2022, Prime Minister Edi Rama inspected a government investment in the rehabilitation of the waste field in the Municipality of Mat and praised it as 'a historic transformation'.

"An extraordinary job has been done. This great transformation with waste management is historic, because this area has been drowned in garbage," said Rama, while calling for a new culture of cleaning.

The project to rehabilitate the waste disposal site in the municipality of Mati was carried out through an investment of 40 million lek from the Ministry of Environment, but three years later, the gangrene with waste treatment continues unchanged.

BIRN visited the landfill on the outskirts of the town of Burrel in early September and observed a pile of waste leveled alongside the road, as the new investment had become too large and was preventing municipal vehicles from unloading waste within the perimeter.

Among the piles of garbage, some residents rummage in search of recyclable materials with which to make a living.

“The machine cannot unload the waste into the landfill because the ground has collapsed,” says one of the collectors. “A water leak has occurred in the center of the landfill, causing a hole,” he added.

The Ministry of Environment contracted the company Alba Kontruksion for the works and took them over, to then hand over the landfill to the Municipality of Mat for administration.

But the Municipality continues to call the waste field a landfill and the problem of its treatment still unresolved.

"In the Municipality of Mat, waste is currently not processed or recycled. It is deposited in the landfill rehabilitated by the Ministry of Tourism and Environment... Based on the local integrated waste management plan, we are awaiting a new investment and restructuring for waste management at the regional level," the Municipality declared.

Nezir Rizvani, the former democratic mayor of Mati Municipality, told BIRN that the Mati landfill project was a failure, "as it was done without a geological study."

"Now the groundwater has burst there, causing landslides and damage to one side of the retaining wall. Thus, the waste management situation has gotten completely out of control," he stated.

The waste disposal site rehabilitation project initially raised hope for the northern municipality of Mati, which has been dumping waste in the same place since 1997. As in other municipalities in the country, waste in Mati is not treated, but is collected unseparated at source and transported to the landfill.

Democratic MP for the Dibra district, Denisa Vata, told BIRN that the so-called landfill does not meet environmental conditions even after the money spent by the Ministry of Environment on its rehabilitation.

"On the former open surface where waste was continuously dumped, the so-called landfill was built in 2021. The entirety of this construction includes only two retaining walls in the northeast direction, as well as a layer of sand at its base, and nothing else," said Vata.

Despite the worsening situation, the Municipality of Mati told BIRN in a written response that it had no financial difficulties in managing waste, as it provided for it from the revenues it collects from the cleaning fee.

But local opposition representatives insist that waste management is one of the municipality's main problems.

"There are no waste bins, which leads to their overloading. Meanwhile, this also prevents waste separation at source," Vata told BIRN.

"The worst thing is that not only solid waste, but also hospital waste is collected in common bins," she concluded. Reporter.al