Perhaps the most familiar scene in the streets of Tripoli today is the piles of garbage filling up the place. People see these piles in their residential areas and neighborhoods and are unable to do anything about them other than complain.
Household and commercial garbage need a process for their collection, transport, and final disposal by either burial or recycling. The question that poses itself is what is going on in the capital city of Libya, and why is it not clean like most other capital cities of the world?
Perhaps the most familiar scene in the streets of Tripoli today is the piles of garbage filling up the place. People see these piles in their residential areas and neighborhoods and are unable to do anything about them other than complain.
Household and commercial garbage need a process for their collection, transport, and final disposal by either burial or recycling. The question that poses itself is what is going on in the capital city of Libya, and why is it not clean like most other capital cities of the world?
Miloud Mubarak, Director of Planning Department at the Public Service Company, said that the city is not clean although there are millions spent on sanitation. “Our company does only 50% of the collection and transport of garbage in the capital city.”
The reasons, he explained, are old ones. “Law No. 13 of 1984, which stipulates that the house should be served by its people, as quoted from the Green Book of Gaddafi, is responsible for this problem,” he said. “This law bans the collection of garbage from houses and only allows the collection and transport from main streets. The former regime had no concerns about the environment.”
Mubarak claims that the new government is not much better regarding environmental issues and is primarily concerned with security. Environmental awareness amongst the population is also a problem, as residents don’t take out their garbage at the right times.
“The company cannot specify the time for the vehicles to start the collection process because of the prevailing security situation in the country. Moreover, the drivers of sanitation vehicles are often insulted and offended by the people and sometimes they face armed robbery, especially at night.”
Old laws
Every now and then, the company’s employees go on strike to demand payment of their delayed salaries and to ask for changing the old regulations of the company, upon which the budget is calculated. This has happened lately in Benghazi because the prices are stipulated in an old law that estimates the cost of garbage disposal (collection, transport and final disposal) to be 39 dinars (US $32) per ton. Regarding the cleaning of the streets, the cost per one linear meter is calculated at 13 dirhams. So, if we assume that the front of a house is 20 meters long, is it possible to find a person who is willing to clean this space for quarter of a dinar?” said Mubarak.
He added that “the company is also unable to clean up and arrange the public parks. It has allocated four dinars annually for the cleaning of every square meter of public parks. In 2006, this amount was amended and increased to reach eight dinars per meter square, and this is equal to 110 dirhams per day (including water, electricity, pesticides, cutting grass, transport and other costs). Moreover, there are no budgets allocated neither for fountains nor for grave yards.”
The prices, as quoted by Mubarak, were amended in July 2013. The cost was increased to 81 dinars (US $66) for each household, but the new regulation did not enter into force until now.
The budget is not enough
A study conducted earlier by the Public Services Company explains that based on the number of Tripoli’s inhabitants – 1.5 million people— the amount of household garbage produced is 2,500 tons per day, because the average production of household garbage is 1.6 kg per day per person, which is approximately equal to 600 kilograms per year.
This annual quantity of household garbage requires more than 35.5 million dinars (US $29,000,000) to be collected, transported and disposed of. This amount does not include administrative and technical matters.
Instead of increasing the budgets of the public services companies across Libya, they have been reduced from 600 million to 250 million dinars and the Ministry of Local Government, which is responsible for setting the budget has allocated 46 million dinars in 2013 to the city of Tripoli, without accurately taking into account the number of residents. Today, there are displaced people living in it and unregistered foreign labour. This budget is only enough to cover 50% of the garbage collection needs of the capital city. .
Foreign workers
Foreign workers cleaning the streets are employed from the local market and in some cases with local salaries of approximately 450 (US $366) dinars per month.
Most of these workers, particularly those of Sub-Saharan African origin, reside in the companies’ sites and do not have legal residency permits. However, they have identification cards issued by the company, which also takes their passports from them.
Their salaries are paid by checks and not in cash because of the possibilities of attacks on them by armed thieves in their workplaces or even in the places of their residency. They also collect and keep garbage they believe can have a purchase value and by doing so, they expose themselves to health hazards and they also transmit diseases and germs.
Lack of resources
There are 3,400 Libyans employed by Tripoli’s public services company in addition to 2,000 foreign workers who only collect and pile up the garbage.
Abdel-Hamid al-Saqzili, an employee of the company’s planning administration, said: “Most of those who work in the transport of garbage are foreign laborers. Libyans work as drivers, technicians and supervisors and in the cleaning of parks and cemeteries.”
The company, according to Saqzili, is not only tasked with the collection, transportation and disposal of garbage and cleaning the public parks, but it also has a factory which prepares street banners and numbers, baskets and signs.
“According to international standards, the city of Tripoli needs 5,000 workers to collect garbage and clean the streets. The company has only 2,000 workers. The company also needs 525 transport vehicles yet it has only 120, in addition to another 100 cars that belong to other supporting companies.”
Unhealthy dumping sites
The final stage of the waste burial had been neglected by the old and new regime. Even the garbage landfills, which were chosen in areas distant from residential areas are now becoming inhibited because of the unlicensed randomly built houses. Today those new comers are continuously complaining about them.
The Sidi al-Saeh Landfill is built on 100 hectares of vast land. It’s capacity as a final disposal site is enough for 30 years according to Saqzili. The company has submitted full proposals for waste management in the year 201 but they were not accepted by the General People’s Committee, i.e., the prime ministry at that time.”
Thus, the wastes of Tripoli continued to seep into the soil and contaminate it in the absence of any laws, until today, to organise the management of polluting wastes such as medical and electronic wastes.
The Sidi al-Saeh Landfill was started at a distance of more than 5 km away from residential areas. After its creation, fire started to erupt spontaneously inside it and poisonous gases, such as methane gas, started being discharged from it, according to al-Saqzili. He added that “rodents and insects started to breed because there is no waste management system and only 30 cm of soil is added to cover the garbage.”
In March 2012, the people of the Sidid al-Saeh area closed the landfill and refused to open it for more than four months. Garbage started to pile up in the streets of Tripoli, and this has led the Ministry of Housing and Utilities to announce that the city is going to face an environmental disaster if this closure continues for a longer period.
After that, the ministry reached an agreement with the people allowing it to use this landfill for six months only after providing them with all the necessary guarantees that it will be closed for ever after the end of this period, but that did not happen.
This also applies to the temporary dumping area in Ain Zara area. At this site, there were no residential units, but with the widespread of unplanned randomly built houses, the neighbours started to complain about it and about the smell it is causing.
The public services company’s officials stress that citizens are rejecting all proposal for a temporary or permanent landfill in any area of Tripoli, because of the fear that such landfills will bring serious problems for their areas.
The recycle of garbage
In March 2012, the Ministry of Housing and Utilities had announced that it was seeking to build factories for recycling garbage within 1-2 years period of time, similar to those which exist in other countries of the world, on healthy and clean environmental basis, to sort and recycle garbage. It also announced that these factories would create job opportunities for the Libyans.
According to Mubarak, two years have passed and none of these promises were fulfilled. There are no wastes recycling operations now and the only method used to dispose of the wastes in the landfills only.
Mubarak said that in the past, there was a French factory in the al-Sawani area for recycling wastes. This factory was created in the year 1977 away from all residential areas. An Egyptian company had operated this factory from 2000 to 2005. Its production has reached 500 tons per day, and it was producing organic compost, cardboard, and iron.
He added that “because of a problem in the fermentation mechanism (the smell released from the compost was very strong and it was affecting the surrounding areas). The new residents near the factory complained to Baghdadi Mahmudi (a Prime Minister during the Gaddafi regime’s era), who issued a decree suspending the work of the factory in 2008.”
There was also the Sidi al-Saeh Factory, which was created in 2003, and its capacity has reached 320 tons per day of organic fertilizers, plastic, metal and cardboard (carton). However, in August 2011, it was destroyed and stolen by some vandals, according to Mubarak.
Companies complain
Mubarak questions the possibility of the government’s success in its efforts to address this problem as announced by Prime Minister Ali Zeidan who said, in July 2013, that three local companies have been contracted to remove the garbage and three-month period to prove their capacities. If they succeed in their work, their contracts will be extended and if they fail, the government will contract foreign companies,” said PM Zeidan who said the government’s interest in the private sector came from a reliance due to its efficient performance.”
Yet Mubarak claimed that until now, no foreign company has been contracted to do the job. “What can a foreign company do with these resources and with this very limited budget? There was a French Company, Viola, which came to the country and requested an amount of 280 million Euros (US $383,000,000) only to clean up Tripoli. This is four times more than our company’s budget,” he said..
