News

The Municipality of Sidon has been closely and continuously following, for the past two days, the developments resulting from the suspension of operations at the solid household waste treatment plant, which has stopped receiving waste delivered from the area covered by the Sidon–Zahrani Union of Municipalities. This has led NTCC Company to halt waste collection, causing waste to accumulate in the streets of the city and in the towns belonging to the union.

From the very beginning, the municipality initiated a series of communications and meetings with the relevant authorities to address this new development and prevent its negative repercussions on the city and its residents.

The Municipality of Sidon stresses that the waste treatment plant is a public-interest facility, and that any suspension of its operations or refusal to receive waste contradicts the principle of continuity of public services. It also threatens environmental and public health safety and exposes the city and its surroundings to serious risks that cannot be accepted under any circumstances.

The municipality further considers that resorting to stopping waste reception whenever a financial or administrative dispute arises between the plant and the concerned parties is an unacceptable practice. Such actions burden citizens and municipalities with the consequences of disputes in which they have no involvement, placing the public interest and public health at risk.

Based on its legal and moral responsibility to protect the city and its residents, the municipal council decided to take the necessary legal measures. Acting Mayor of Sidon, Dr. Ahmad Akra, along with a number of heads of municipalities from the Sidon–Zahrani Union, submitted an official complaint before the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Appeal in South Lebanon, before Judge Zaher Hamadeh. A report documenting the incident was also prepared, and the necessary complaint was filed at Sidon Police Station. The case has been placed in the hands of the competent judiciary to take the appropriate legal action.

While reaffirming that the accumulation of waste in the streets or exposing the city to any new environmental crisis is completely unacceptable and a red line that it will not allow to be crossed, the Municipality of Sidon emphasizes that it will continue taking all necessary legal and administrative measures to protect public health, the environment, and the public interest. It will continue following up on this issue until a sustainable solution is reached that ensures such crises do not happen again in the future.