Emiriana Sako, the mayor who works for Tirana's incinerator

2024-02-06 12:59:00, Aktualitet CNA

Few people remember that afternoon of February 21, 2022, when the mayor of Durrës, Emiriana Sako, had to leave the parliamentary investigative committee for the incinerator scandal. At that time, when Edi Rama still had not stopped the deputies' investigations into the affairs of his government, on the pretext that they were distorting his words, Mrs. Sako left the hall, despite the calls of the democrats that she would be prosecuted for refusing to testify .

In fact, the real trouble of the mayor of Durrës, who was still young at the time, was not related to the mistreatment by the opposition parliamentarians. The real reason was found in the measures that had been forcibly imposed by its bosses, to deposit the city's garbage at a very high cost in the landfill of Tirana, which at that time was still called an incinerator.

This was the real reason that Emiriana Sako could not answer and it is related to the amazing figures that we know now. Based on recently made public data, the Municipality of Durres spends more than half of its total budget to feed money to Integrated Energy BV, SPV. Even at the beginning of this year, it has thrown millions of euros into the budget of the seized enterprise by order of SPAK.

To tell the full truth, Emiriana Sako does not have the main responsibility. She found the way to deposit Durrës' garbage in the capital's landfill. She took office after the resignation of the president-elect Valbona Sako and was commissioned by Edi Rama as vice-president to run this institution at the beginning of 2020. But since July 2018, by order of the Durrës Municipal Council, the environmental emergency had been declared , (according to the model of Elbasan) with the excuse that there was no place to deposit the garbage. For some time this file was left silent. Until January 2020, Edi Rama passes to the National Council of the Territory, the transformation of the city's waste disposal site in Porto Romano, into an Eco Park.

So exactly when Emiriana Sako comes to office, Durres is practically forced to "export" garbage to Tirana. Someone else made the decisions, but Sako is obliged to implement them. In this period, Top Channel's news is flooded with "critical chronicles" about the boilers that are stinking up the city. Under this political media pressure, still without any contractual relationship, the municipality of Sako starts to send the waste to the landfill of Integrated Energy BV, SPV. This is a point that even today the current mayor cannot explain, as he did it without a legal basis. Only later, in June, after the city had abandoned the Porto Romano landfill, does the City Council give Sako the go-ahead to negotiate with the incinerator bosses to dump her city's remains there?

But what contract did she sign, although without her own initiative and with a move that was almost forced upon her? It agrees to pay a fee of 29 euros per ton for the 200 tons of waste produced by Durrës per day. And how much does it cost for about 70 thousand tons per year? Close to ALL 964 million, or 63% of the coastal city's budget revenue. And so the municipality of Emiriana Sako constitutes a unique case, that of a city administration that spends more than 60 percent of its income to remove garbage. So to give money to the one that some still call the incinerator of Tirana.

Therefore, rightly, when she was in front of the Parliamentary investigative committee, Mayor Sako avoided the investigation by leaving the room. Because in fact, she was elected by the citizens of Durrës, but she actually works for Integrated Energy BV, SPV./ Lapsi.al