Finance and Budget Committee Tackles Trash File, Kanaan Refuses Turning Metn into Dumpster

The parliamentary Finance and Budget Committee kicked off a meeting on Monday to address the trash crisis in the presence of related ministers and representatives of the Council for Development and Reconstruction.

“The solution that the government came out with is not a perfect one. There is a need to implement administrative decentralization in this file,” said Head of the Committee MP Ibrahim Kanaan after the meeting.

“We have decided to invite the union of the municipalities concerned with the trash file to attend the Committee's meeting next Wednesday,” he added.

“We do not want to turn the Metn coast into a dumpster, nor do we want to turn our streets into a dumpster. We are open to all solutions.”

“We need a transitional phase until administrative decentralization is implemented. Our project is the total liberation of the municipalities' jurisdictions as an independent authority,” remarked Kanaan.

Earlier, Kanaan told An Nahar daily that the meeting would provide an opportunity to view all the ideas and objections in the presence of Minister of Agriculture Akram Shehayyeb, MP Sami Gemayel, MP Agop Pakradonian and CDR representatives.

“Our first concern is not to leave garbage in the streets and secondly is to prevent the transformation of the Metn coast into a dumpster. Supposing the government’s plan is incomplete then we must complete and modify it,” he told the daily.

“We seek a broader plan based on the establishment of power plants for the reproduction of energy from waste, decentralization of trash treatment which requires years of preparation meaning that we are in dire need of a phased plan and control in execution,” added the MP.

For his part, Shehayyeb is expected to reaffirm adherence to the government's trash plan, said the daily and added that the Minister will hold those who reject it the responsibility of the trash crisis in the areas of Ashrafieh, Metn and Keserwan.

Last week, the trash management plan witnessed a setback and the waste started accumulating once again in the streets of Metn, Keserwan and a small section of Beirut after protesters closed the Bourj Hammoud landfill.

Kataeb party students forced the work to a halt at the landfill and demanded the halt to what they alleged “the project of land-filling the sea with garbage on Metn's coast.”

Lebanon's unprecedented trash management crisis erupted in July 2015 after the closure of the Naameh landfill, which was receiving the waste of Beirut and Mount Lebanon.

The crisis, which sparked unprecedented protests against the entire political class, has seen streets, forests and riverbanks overflowing with waste and the air filled with the smell of rotting and burning garbage.

On March 12, the cabinet decided to establish two landfills in Costa Brava and Bourj Hammoud and to reactivate the Naameh landfill for two months as part of a four-year plan to resolve the country’s waste problem despite the rejection of many residents and civil society activists.