After delays, the government evicted the company building the Lana water treatment plant. Now, the company has taken the state to court in London and it is holding that plant hostage.
Author: Fjori Sinoruka, Joana Spaho
Lavender uniform, dry, dark, about sixty, waves Shefki to stop talking, and approaches slowly, as if climbing the mountain. Shefkiu, the fifty-one-year-old man in a hat and work pants from the next village, takes a thirty-yard left into this fenced-in place, where the waves of yellowing grass begin, and starts cutting them again with his scythe. .
Like the place in Dajt where Lana starts, the area is now technically part of Tirana. The part that is a peat field has been named the Kashari plant, but the old names here still do not mean anything to the city, as Varri i Bami, Burgu i Vjetër, Zogu i Vjetër, or Kombinati can say, although Kombinati square from here it is not even two kilometers away. On the other side is Kodër-Mëzezi. On the hill from the west, in the nineties, families from Kuksi have settled here and there, and the locals ironically call it Dukagji. This side of the hill to the east holds Zalta's glass cemetery, a house and a hotel that overlooks these twenty-odd acres surrounded by wire fence—rows of tubs or cylindrical pipes, reinforced concrete silos.
The lavender uniform walks leisurely, as if to buy time. He is afraid that something will slip out of his mouth, but also curiosity seems to eat him from his armpit.
"Ask the water company,” it begins. "You have nothing here. You will go to Tirana, you will go to the General Directorate of Waterworks of Tirana, they will tell you why the work has stopped here. To the City Hall."
He takes a step along the fence and the badge hanging around his neck is returned to him. Ndreu private police. After a quarter of an hour, after once again taking out the duff about corruption and gluttony in the country, his own story begins to emerge. He was a zootechnician by trade in Skrapar, but he has been living in Yzberish for over ten years. Girls, in school or married. He himself walks with his wife there from the aviation field in the afternoons, he comes here in the mornings. What to do? He gets bored, but he doesn't beat himself even without work.
Work here began when the site was closed by order of the state in the summer of 2018. Work has been done, canals have been opened at the Palace with arrows, they go through those wells like the one there, and he shows it with his hand from outside the fence. A well with concrete walls, now surrounded by reeds that feed on brown water.
Where Lana would clean herself, the tubs that no one lets you see—no one lets you see anything inside, but they look good in Google Maps and from the hills opposite—, a few days after it rains, he says, the toads croak.
As soon as lunch starts, the televisions start the media spectacles of Erion Veliaj, the Mayor of the Municipality, who says that the Lana water treatment project here will start again soon, and Lana will have clean water. It's June, election campaign, after a week there are elections.
But September is coming and work is not ready to start.
Arbitration!
The construction site of the Wastewater Treatment Plant of Greater Tirana, which was declared with media euphoria that it would finally solve the discharge of the city's sewage in Lana in 2016, was blocked by the Ministry of Infrastructure years on a hot day wine like this. That enterprise with two hundred or so people at work, which was considered one of the 200 businesses largest in the country, was deleted for two weeks. The firms tasked with working on it were evicted from the site, which was seized. The cafe for workers outside it, run by a dibran, disappeared without a trace.
An audit of the ministry from April of last year claims that all the funds for half of the works have been spent. But like Becchetti, the eccentric Italian who is winning international arbitrations for the closure of enterprises in Albania, the firm that worked for him has taken the government to arbitration in London for illegal contract cancellation.
"No, this also went to arbitration, even for ten years Lana's problem has not been resolved," says Taulant Zeneli, who followed it as a project in the Ministry of Public Works in the early stages.
The metropolis that dumps garbage into the river
Tirana pours its sewage directly into the river. From the south of Kavaja Street, from the center towards the former train station, they flow into the Tirana River. But most of the city, to the left or to the right of Lana, throws them into it since the time of communism.
How to fix Lana has always been the gogol of state administrations. From the early nineties it was proposed to cap it, or put the sewage under a tunnel under the concrete bed and get water elsewhere in the summer to keep it from drying out.
Neither idea worked because the city got completely out of hand. The slopes of Lana were littered with restaurants, shops and cafes, and the stream itself, apart from Tirana's sewage, also collected their garbage. In 1996 there was an explosion polio and there was talk of episodes of the plague, the disease that as an epidemic of the pre-modern world forced the inhabited centers of the West to come under control of the sewers. "Lana transcends the lexical distinction between river and sewer," he wrote PJ O'Rourke, an American satirist.
When construction broke down in the early 2000s, money was found from the World Bank to fix some of the sewers. On one side of Lana, that of Shallvareve, a pipeline was built collector where the sewers of that part of Tirana ended. That collector flows into the river at the end of the concrete bed, at the Arrow Palace. But on the other hand, the city continues to pour its sewage directly into Lana. The arrow-shaped palatine takes on the final functions of the intestine in mammals.
Japanese project
The effort to solve the problems of sewage discharge in the middle of the city began sometime in the late nineties. Like all things that cost a lot, it would be done with foreign donations. The Japanese government's international aid agency, known by its acronym JICA, pronounced Xhajka, undertook to finance the solution to the 'used' water problem.
It was thought to build two underground canals for Lana, collector, parallel to it up to the Palace with arrows to separate the sewage from that of the stream. The sludge from those canals would then be treated at a treatment plant in the Kashari area west of the city. The treated water would come out almost drinkable and would be poured back into Lana. The waste could be used to produce energy. An employee of Xhajka said that this would be the most modern sewage system project in the Balkans. First, the pipeline to the plant and the plant itself would be built.
In the year 2008, the Albanian government received a soft loan of 11 billion yen (approximately 100 million euros) from the Japanese government for this.
All that remained to be done was the tender.
Tenders
Luigi De Vivo, the Italian engineer quoted in the first article of this series, arrived in Tirana in January 2015. "I came to Albania to speed things up," he says. His predecessor had his contract terminated after less than a year because they were so far behind. The construction site had been erected, but the work had not started. The expropriations were not even done. But after a few months he started to see the real problems.
"The contract was very rigid, demanding maximum adherence to deadlines, and we had a lot of difficulties with subcontractors."
De Vivo had been hired as a project manager by Dondi, a company set up by an engineer and entrepreneur in Rovigo in northern Italy to work on public water-sewage contracts during that country's economic boom in the eighties. In 2013, Dondi had won the tender to build the purification plant, in a consortium with Kubota, the Japanese machinery giant, to which it would receive some special pumps. He committed to doing it for about eight billion yen, something between 60 and 70 million euros. The company had Albanian experience. Two years earlier, with EU funding, it had built a similar, but much smaller, plant in Velipoja.
However, when Dondi started applying for the 'Japanese tender', there was some hesitation in Tirana. Articles had appeared in the Italian press FOR crash between the company and a city of thirty thousand inhabitants in the province of Lazio. Even today, the company's English website smacks of some Nigerian cyber scam, with careless language for a company that manages public projects worth millions of euros. For example, the principles of information collection (Cookie policy) for visitors to that website, which in Italy are declared by law, are written at the bottom of the page as Cockies policy, which makes someone who knows English laugh, because it is not only misspelled, but also has unflattering connotations. However, until recently, Dondi has had plenty of work throughout Italy and abroad.
"I talked about this (reluctance)," says an official close to the tendering process, according to Italian newspaper articles. "But the Japanese liked that firm and said you couldn't prejudice a company that wasn't doomed."
We are late...
By the beginning of 2016, it was becoming clear that Dondi was not going to be good at finishing work on time.
The construction of the wells, necessary for the construction of the channel that would take the sewage to the plant, was moving very slowly due to the expropriations. In one place it ended up between two shoe factories on the highway, says an employee at the site, another happened to a person in the yard who then threatened to come out with a rifle, and then it was decided to search for land without problems. The project, and the work plan with it, underwent changes.
There were also irritations at work. Once, a source says, a complaint about the quality of concrete poured into a ceiling held up an installment payment.
"The problem was that even our subcontractor had hired another company to do the work, subcontractor after subcontractor," says De Vivo. For the works on the construction site, Dondi had taken as a subcontractor a company called Sterkaj, with which he had previously worked in Velipoja. Sterkaj, run by businessman Lulzim Sterkaj, a distant cousin of the entrepreneur, former police officer and socialist politician from the north of Albania, Paulin Sterkaj, had subcontracted the works to a firm named Shehu Konstruksion. “With such distributed responsibilities, it was difficult to hold them accountable,” says De Vivo. The subcontractor himself complained that the work was delayed during the rains as the ground quickly became muddy and difficult to move through.
In addition, in 2015, a decline in the Japanese yen, in which the loan was granted, relative to the euro, in which the payments were made, was used as a reason for the increase in costs.
As a result, Dondi asked for a one-year reprieve. De Vivo was replaced by another works supervisor. Our efforts to talk to the supervisors and senior officials of Dondi were fruitless, despite repeated insistence.
At work, Dondi continued at a slow pace and sometime in the spring of 2017, he asked for another twelve-month extension. Albania would hold parliamentary elections that year.
Chronology 1998 – The Albanian government asks the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for help to study the problem of sewage and sewage in Tirana. 2007 – A company commissioned by JICA, Tokyo Engineering Consultants, completes the study for the management of water used for the city of Tirana, and for the treatment of waste water that flows into Lana and the Tirana River. They are expected to be taken to a treatment plant outside the city. July 2008 – The Albanian government receives a soft development loan of 11 billion yen, (about 100 million euros), for interventions for the treatment of waste and used water. December 2012 - January 2014 - The project for the construction of the waste water treatment plant in Kashar, and the tunnel that will lead a part of Lana's waste water to it, is tendered. An Italian company, Dondi, is declared the winner. March 2014 – Dondi and the Ministry of Public Works sign the contract for the construction of the plant, with Dondi committing to complete the work within two years. The works will be monitored by the Ministry and by a supervisory consortium led by Tokyo Engineering Consultants and appointed by JAICA. April 2014 – The plant site in Kashar is inaugurated with a ceremony by the Minister of Public Works Edmond Haxhinasto. 2016 – Dondi, the Italian company managing the works, requests an extension of the plant's construction deadline. June 2017 – The parliamentary elections in Albania give the absolute majority of seats in the parliament to the Socialist Party. Dondi requests a postponement of the deadline for the completion of the works by another year. Autumn 2017 – The Ministry of Infrastructure, which replaced the Ministry of Public Works, leads a control and audit team for the Kashari project. April 2018 – The Ministry of Infrastructure prosecutes the team of the General Directorate of Water Supply and Sewerage for abuses in the management of the Kashari project. July 2018 – The National Water and Sewerage Agency terminates the contract with the Dondi company due to delays in the completion of the project and gives them a two-week deadline to vacate the site. October 2018 – The Tirana Court dismisses the case against former officials of the General Directorate of Water and Sewerage for embezzlement in the Kashari project. December 2018 – The Dondi company complains to the Albanian government at the international court of arbitration in London for illegal termination of the contract. September 2019 – The National Water and Sewerage Agency says that the Kashari wastewater treatment project has been suspended pending an arbitration decision.
The cost of politics?
A good part of the people we talked to about this project put a good part of the blame on the political clashes in the country.
The problem is, says Benard Banushi, a water supply and sanitation specialist involved in the project with Sterkaj, that this is a project that "started with the DP, the contract was signed with the LSI, and it was canceled by the SP." According to him, the project fell prey to conflicts where one side sabotages the other.
In fact, LSI led the General Directorate of Water Supply and Sewerage, the agency of the Ministry of Infrastructure that was responsible for the project, even when it was in government with the Democratic Party, even when it was in coalition with the Socialist Party until 2017.
When the Socialist Party won an absolute majority of seats in the parliament in the 2017 elections, it launched an audit of all projects administered by LSI, including the delayed Kashari plant project. An inspection team, this time from the ministry, was stationed there in the fall. "It was not a good sign," says one employee. "It's never a good sign when you get a check."
Last spring, the Ministry prosecuted the persons responsible for the project in the state, claiming that approximately a quarter of the fund was wasted. The abuses stemmed from exchange rate excuses, unjustified invoices, and late payments. Among them, a fifth of the fund could have been justified by the decline in the value of the yen, the Ministry's lawsuit says.
The DPUK, with Xhajka's approval, granted another year's postponement to Dondi to reach the rates, but "it was not possible to catch those rates," says an official close to the project. "The quality of the works was good, but they were very late." But Dondi could not close even half the tunnels, and had made only a dozen of their wells. Even the plant itself was not completely finished, although there the work was going somewhat better. That July, Arben Skenderi, the then director of DPUK, put the construction site, for which it is said that 40 million euros should have been spent, in sequestration with guards.
"I'm not a specialist in that project," Skenderi said by phone this September, when reached for comment, and suggested other officials speak.
Last year, Dondi lost trials in Albania: one DISPUTES with the tax department. The team it had in Tirana was reduced and used, 'enough to find Kola at work', in some other application of the company in the world (even in Tirana, and in Rovigo, word is circulating that the company has difficulty getting contracts in Italy). . This summer, the office was finally closed.
The General Directorate of Water and Sewerage, since 2017 called the National Agency (AKUK), says that the project has been suspended until the end of the arbitration in London.
Channel in the open sky
The slopes of Lana have long been groomed and landscaped, but here at the Arrow Palace, the wind is so strong that people crossing the bridge hold their noses with their hands. The wind continues to be heavy even after the rain, when here the water comes rushing from Dajti and causes flooding, since from here on the constructions have tightened the place where the water passes.
"If you want to understand the Lana's problems, go out at dusk where it passes through Laknas," says Dritan Bratko, a hydraulic engineer who did the water system study for the current municipality's strategic plan. That is, just across from this place, from the highway to where Lana joins the River of Tirana and where the garbage brought by the city accumulates. "At dusk, there are fewer cars, people begin to calm down, temperatures drop but the earth is still hot, and the layers of debris brought by that river are stronger and more sensitive. At that moment, the wind blows."
With ritual regularity, the reports of the National Environment Agency reveal the second most polluted river in Albania, after Gjanica e Fier. Nitrites, which are responsible for the smell, are three times higher than the acceptable level. There is little oxygen. Fecal bacteria feast in the stream. And all this mass moves to Ishem and flows into the Adriatic.
"The thing is, no one thinks about Lana, because it's not something that brings votes," says Banushi, the water supply and sanitation engineer. In October 2018, the Court dismissed the case against the team that the ministry took to court for embezzling a quarter of the fund. According to the court, the expenses had been approved by Xhajka, which monitored the project, or had been justified. The yen actually fluctuated by a quarter of its value compared to the euro in the period 2014-16. According to the court's decision, the Ministry did not appear at the hearing.
The Kashari construction site continues to sleep, in sequestration. A Facebook page with the project's English name, Greater Tirana Sewage Water Treatment Plant, there is a photo and two likes, likes, anonymous.
Another lavender uniform of the private police Ndreu, met this weekend, said that this month the lights at the construction site were also cut, which upset him a lot because he couldn't even get the radio to work. But I have seen movement, he says. "I saw the project manager with a Japanese man. I was told that Paulin Sterkaj received the second installment and will finish the works."
Arlis Alikaj and Donald Zaimi also reported on this article.
*Edited by Altin Raxhimi
