Jumblat Says No Hand in Any Garbage-Linked Investment
إقرأ هذا الخبر بالعربية
Progressive Socialist Party chief MP Walid Jumblat has stressed that he had no ties to any investment linked to Lebanon's waste management crisis.
Jumblat told As Safir daily published on Wednesday that there was potential for his sons Taymour and Aslan to enter in a partnership with Riad al-Asaad.
“But three weeks ago I withdrew my hand totally from the case after I felt (it would have) political dangers,” the lawmaker said.
“Consequently I have no ties to Asaad's company or any other private company and I am not a partner in any rumored deal,” stressed Jumblat.
Asaad is the owner of South for Construction s.a.l., a Lebanese contracting company specialized in infrastructure, road works, marine works, buildings and maintenance of infrastructure network utilities.
Asked about a protest carried out by the residents of Ain Dara, which lies in Aley district, on Tuesday, Jumblat said: “They don't have the right to object.”
The residents blocked the vital Dahr al-Baydar road over reports that garbage from other areas will be transferred to their region.
The highway links the Beirut, Mount Lebanon and Bekaa regions.
The location to dump the waste there is “dead because of the stone crushing plants that had already exploited it,” said Jumblat.
The garbage crisis erupted following the closure of the Naameh landfill that lies south of Beirut on July 17.
Waste continued to pile up in Beirut and Mount Lebanon because the authorities failed to find an alternative.
Although Sukleen resumed to collect waste, there has been controversy on where the trash is being dumped in addition to warnings from local officials and protests by residents to stop the transfer of garbage from Beirut and Mount Lebanon to their regions.
29 July 2015, 08:15
66
yes that's ingenious, wait for the crisis to erupt and then come up with a solution, for a nice fee :)
29 July 2015, 09:43
53
Junblatt is not innocent in all of this. The Naameh landfill does not belong to him and he does not own it. Yes, the decision was made to close it but for him to insist on closing it without giving the government a few weeks extension until the government gets the alternate sites sorted out is irresponsible as well. Yes, the government is delinquent and careless, but had the Naameh landfill remained open for a few extra weeks, Lebanon would not have witnessesd this catastrophic environmental disaster.
29 July 2015, 11:03
03
ex-fpm, the thing is it takes much much longer than a few weeks to prepare a site for a landfill. Unless we want to poison the groundwater and contaminate surrounding land, you can't just dump garbage wherever you want. You have to build a sanitary landfill (or some other environmentally responsible waste management solution) which takes at least six months to 1.5 years, depending on the solution. The government should have begun finding a solution long ago. Whatever temporary solution they find will be an environmental disaster.
29 July 2015, 12:41
24
matt, you're absolutely right. The solution should have been implemented long time ago. In 2010 a plan was approved before the hariri government was toppled and later governments did not tackle the issue. I was merely saying instead of dumping on the streets why not continue to dump in Naameh. It seems the government will now dump waste in 3 or 4 other locations.
29 July 2015, 13:01
25
Bassil: Our position on cabinet decisions, whether on the garbage issue or not, has not been taken into consideration since 2010.
So when you had the Miqati government all by yourself along with HA for almost 2 years, your positions on the garbage issue were still not taken in consideration? LOL
