Report: Salam May Resign if Garbage Disposal Plan Not Adopted Next Week
Prime Minister Tammam Salam is beginning to “weigh his options” in light of his realization that solutions to the garbage disposal crisis may have reached a dead end, reported the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat on Sunday.
A ministerial source told the daily: “Salam will not remain an hour more in his position on Thursday if the trash disposal plan of Agriculture Akram Shehayyeb is not adopted.”
Speaker Nabih Berri had asked Salam to wait before taking any step “because he is exerting efforts to overcome obstacles hindering the plan.”
He is also pressuring the premier against resigning in order to avert vacuum in the “executive authority in Lebanon.”
Media reports in recent weeks had been speculating the Salam would step down from his post following the ongoing failure to resolve the garbage disposal crisis that erupted with the closure of the Naameh landfill in July.
The government approved in September Shehayyeb's trash plan that called for waste management to be turned over to municipalities in 18 months, the temporary expansion of two landfills and the reopening for seven days of the Naameh dump south of Beirut.
However the implementation of the plan faced wide rejections of residents and municipalities from outside the capital who refuse to receive the trash other than those of their regions.
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