The Lebanese government on Saturday announced a temporary solution for the country’s eight-month trash crisis by opening three landfills as thousands protested in downtown Beirut.
Lebanese Minister of Information Ramzi Jreij said after an eight-hour Cabinet meeting that the temporary solution would last four years and by then a permanent solution would be in place.
In Beirut, more than 2,000 protesters rejected the option of temporary landfills and demanded a more long-term waste-disposal plan.
Photo: AP
The trash crisis began in July last year, when the country’s main landfill in the town of Naameh just south of Beirut was scheduled to close, with no real alternative landfills available.
Naameh area residents said the dump was over capacity and began blocking the roads to prevent garbage trucks from reaching it.
As garbage began piling up in Beirut, protesters formed the “You Stink” movement, demanding sweeping reform in Lebanon’s government.
Since the peaks of the protest in the summer, authorities have blunted the public anger by ensuring that the streets of Beirut are kept relatively garbage-free. However, the trash has been pushed to the city’s periphery, where it piles up along the roadside and the banks of the Beirut River.
Jreij said that the Naameh landfill would be reopened for two months to take in tens of thousands of tonnes of trash that have piled up around the country.
He added that two other landfills and treatment plants would be opened, north and south of Beirut.
Jreij said the state would compensate areas that host landfills with significant payments and development projects.
He said the government would pay US$6 for every tonne that is sent to Naameh.
Jreij said the government would distribute US$40 million this year to municipalities that agree to host landfills and spend another US$50 million over the next four years on development projects in those areas.
One of the protest organizers, Assad Thebian told reporters that activists are studying the government’s plan and would make an announcement soon.
Earlier on Saturday, more than 2,000 protesters chanted: “We are fed up.”
The protesters vowed to escalate the protest todau by “paralyzing the movement in the country.”
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