Kreishan lays cornerstone of new landfill project in Zarqa

AMMAN — Deputy Prime Minister and Local Administration Minister Tawfiq Kreishan on Thursday laid the cornerstone of the “Azraq Sanitary Landfill Project” in the Zarqa Governorate, with a total cost of JD13.782 million.

Kreishan said that the new landfill is one of the national strategic projects to administrate solid municipal waste for 2015-2034 and develop the infrastructure through establishing “healthy landfills” that consider international standards and the latest environmentally safe technologies, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

He expressed the ministry’s pride in constructing the landfill with Jordanian personnel, which is designed and financed by the government, as well as EU support. 

Kreishan added that the ministry, in cooperation with UNDP, is tasked with engineering supervision of the project that will serve several municipalities, noting that the landfill will provide a long-term operational capacity to burry waste in environmentally safe ways for at least 20 years.

Meanwhile, deputy cooperation department at the EU Commission in Jordan Silva Tula referred to the importance of the project’s location that serves a wide area of municipalities and neighbouring Syrian refugee camps, which will reduce the burden on the surrounding environment and water resources.

UNDP Resident Representatives Randa Abu Al Huson said that this is among the top projects that represent the cooperation between the programme and the ministry, where the scheme will serve all the municipalities of Zarqa for over two decades.

Director of the Solid Wasters Directorate at the Ministry Bassem Saaideh said that the project tender extends for two years, noting that the area of the landfill is about 200,000 square metres with digging works of 2.1 million cubic metres, where the healthy cells of waste stands at around 8 million cubic metres with a virtual age of the cells of some 22.5 years.