Prime Minister Edi Rama has reacted again to the flooding situation in Durrës, this time blaming the garbage that citizens throw away. In a photo posted on the social network X, showing waste in a canal in Shkozet, Rama writes that throwing garbage and plastic bottles blocks the mouths of the canals and this causes flooding.
"Of course, when we throw garbage and plastic bottles in the fields and on the sides of the roads of the homeland that we love only in the stadium, one day the rain comes and collects them from where they are and where they are not and floods them into the sea. But when the rain is as fierce as this last one, the mouth of the canal completely clogs, flooding the whole world... Shkozet," Rama writes.
The Prime Minister is right when he says that waste should not be dumped anywhere, but it seems ridiculous when he claims that it is the cause of the floods and not the failure of the government and the Durrës municipality to build the necessary sewers.
The government must explain what happened to the 8.2 million euros that the Council of Ministers transferred to the Municipality of Durrës in 2023, for the construction, supervision and approval of the drainage network in Porto-Romano and Ish-Kënetë. Why were these funds not enough to prevent Durrës from flooding today?
Even when the prime minister blames the waste, he at the same time shows the failure of the government and the municipality to clean up the city, despite the millions of euros invested. According to the Albanian Supreme Audit Office, in 2023, the Municipality of Durrës spent 9.6 million euros on waste management alone, while in 2022 this figure represented 29.4% of the total budget. All these costs increased after the government decided that the waste would go to the Tirana incinerator, which in practice functions as a landfill.
Also, in October last year, the Municipality of Durrës awarded the company “Integrated Energy Bv Spv” Shpk, 6.2 billion old lek for “urban waste disposal” for three years. Not only was the contract awarded through negotiation without advertising, but the winner was again the company that is currently under investigation and seizure by SPAK for the incinerator affair.
Considering all these expenses, the question arises, why does Durrës continue to have garbage and flood whenever rainfall intensifies?
When the prime minister gives us this answer, then he can worry about citizens throwing garbage into the canals, and "cover the sun with a sieve", saying that the cause of the floods is plastic bottles.
