Rabat, like several cities in the Kingdom, has chosen to delegate the management of waste collection to private companies. According to a source at the City Council, the average cost of collection services is estimated at 366 DH per tonne. As for the duration of the concession contract, it varies between 5 to 7 years. However, if this management method has been able to prove itself in other cities of Morocco, the capital, for its part, seems to still suffer from its dual status which confers the management of this file on both the wilaya and the City Council. Result: faced with this administrative blur, the designated companies do not respect the specifications often enough; which gives rise to excesses like the one that occurred during the last week which saw the cessation of waste collection activity for one day (7 April) in the Hassan district, on the order of one of these companies under the pretext that the company had not received its fees!

It is the Ozone company that operates in the Hassan and Yaakoub Al Mansour districts. The head of the company had decided to cease all activity before the company was compensated for its activities, we learned from the councillor within the commune of Rabat, Aaddi Bouaarfa. By acting in this way, the boss of this company breaks with a custom according to which it was rather admitted that workers would go on strike to claim their rights, which represents in the eyes of this councillor a real abuse of power. "The company certainly has the right to claim what is owed to it from the City Council, but in a civilised manner. It is not for the citizen to pay for the mistakes made whether by the City Council or any other entity," exclaims Bouaarfa. Contacted by "Le Matin", the president of the finance committee within the City Council, Abdelhak El Mantrach, preferred to minimise the incident, describing it as futile. "I think it is a passing incident due to the slight delay in the payment of the company given that the payment of the money is the responsibility of the wilaya," he stressed.

For his part, the director of the Ozone company remained unreachable despite our attempts to contact him to get his opinion on this question. In any case, what we can deduce from this incident is that Rabat has not visibly yet turned the dark page linked to the poor management of waste collection.

Indeed, despite the succession of companies in charge of the management of this sector, the result still leaves something to be desired. This is due, in a way, to the fact that the capital remains the only city in Morocco to have a special status. That said, the delegated waste management file is managed by two bodies, namely the City Council and the wilaya. A regulation that does not exist in any other city in the Kingdom. In other regions, the municipality fulfils this mission on its own. This status therefore confers on the wilaya exclusively the power to impose penalties on the delegated companies in the event of non-compliance with the specifications signed with the City Council.

Evolution of the capital The city of Rabat, like all the cities of the Kingdom, has experienced in recent decades a demographic increase and urban development which have necessitated the upgrading of the environment and the living environment. Thus, the solid waste sector has been strongly influenced not only by the change in lifestyle, but also by the increase in the production of household and similar waste. Faced therefore with these changes, the municipal services in charge of the management of this sector remained powerless and could not follow this evolution due to the absence of an organisational framework for this sector. This resulted in a degradation of the environment and the living environment of citizens. This situation prompted the City Council to conclude agreements with four delegated companies in 2002 which have been in charge of household waste collection ever since.