CAIRO, March 11 (MENA) – The Arab Organization for Industrialization (AOI) and the Ministry of Local Development signed a contract for establishing four waste management plants at €38.8 million.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will fund the project as part of its Kitchener Drain Depollution Project- Solid Waste Programme, approved in November 2018 with the aim to ensure adequate waste collection, transfer and treatment facilities to accommodate projected waste generation.
The contract was signed by Chairman of the organization’s Arab British for Dymanics Industries (ABD) Maj. Gen. Ismael Sayed and Deputy Minister of Local Development for National Projects Hesham al-Helbawy.
Hailing the fruitful cooperation between the ministry and AOI, the organization’s chief Mokhtar Abdel Latif said the deal with signed in pursuance of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s directives to keep working for invigorating the State’s new solid waste management system, given its importance for improving citizens’ living conditions, cutting pollution rates, entrenching the national waste management industry, and creating new job opportunities.
Kitchener Drain, which extends 69 km, is the main agricultural drain passing through the Nile Delta governorates of Gharbia, Kafr El-Sheikh, and Dakahlia, discharging into the Mediterranean Sea.
The Kitchener Drain has been described by EBRD as one of the most severely polluted drains in Egypt causing significant environmental, economic and social harm. According to it pollution of the Kitchener Drain emanates from several sources, including domestic wastewater (poorly treated and/or untreated) from numerous villages within the three governorates, uncontrolled municipal solid waste disposed of along the banks and into the drains, industrial wastewater discharge, and fertilizers and pesticides discharges from the agricultural drainage system.
The integrated programme will be the first programme in Egypt testing a new cross-sectoral approach that will support the depollution of the Mediterranean Sea and improve the health and environmental situation of the people living in the drain catchment area as well as strengthen the economy by improving the irrigation water quality in the three governorates.
The Project will significantly improve the management of municipal solid waste (which includes collection, transportation, sorting, recycling and final disposal of waste) generated in the three targeted governorates, whose uncontrolled disposal represents a significant source of pollution in the Kitchener Drain which in turn has negative health implications on the population in the area. Accordingly, the Project will provide access to improved waste services to over 5 million people in the 11 districts of the three governorates pertaining to the catchment area in addition to rehabilitate and close the existing waste accumulations on the numerous open dump sites.(MENA)
