The countdown has begun for the opening of the waste transfer site in Salé. The work, which began a year ago, will be completed within a few days. According to the city's mayor, Nourredine Lazrak, the opening of the site is scheduled for the end of September. This is good news for the Slaouis, who have become accustomed to the sight of waste littering the ground in the various districts of Rabat's sister city. But it is the Marabout Benacher garden, located a few metres from the beach in Salé, that seems to suffer the most from the increasingly infrequent passage of waste collection trucks. Indeed, residents of the neighbouring districts wishing to get rid of their household waste go as far as the garden to do so, as the space is clear and rather isolated from other districts. Consequently, the site has turned into an open-air dump in just a few days. For Noureddine Lazrak, this situation is only temporary and will end as soon as the waste transfer quay becomes operational. With a budget of 12 million dirhams, the project was entirely financed by the city's municipal council. As for its construction, it was entrusted to the company Théodeur, part of the Pizzorno group, which is responsible for waste collection in Salé. The development of this transfer quay will help to increase the frequency of truck passages. Vehicles in charge of collection will no longer be obliged to make the entire journey to the Oum Azza landfill to empty their "cargo", which is the case at the moment. The absence of a transfer quay to collect household waste from the Salé commune currently forces the companies in charge of managing this service, namely Techmed, Mechomar and SOS, to make round trips to the Akrach and Oum Azza landfills located in Rabat. A difficulty compounded by the lack of standard collection trucks for waste collection. Indeed, the company Techmed, for example, only deploys small vehicles with limited collection capacity. The company's vehicles thus have to make two trips to deposit the same quantity collected by a standard vehicle. These repetitive trips during the day to Oum Azza thus reduce the frequency of these vehicles' passage, which affects the hygiene and cleanliness of the districts. Thus, with the opening of this site, the city of Salé will be equipped, for the first time, with its own public landfill. "The land, with an area of 1 hectare, belongs to the public domain. We were able to acquire it for a symbolic sum of 1,200 DH per square metre," the mayor points out. It remains important to highlight that Salé remains the only city in the Kingdom to have succeeded in managing the waste collection issue. According to Nourredine Lazrak, this situation is due to the status granted to the Salé commune, which allows it to impose penalties on companies that do not respect the specifications, unlike what happens in Rabat where the decision-making power is entrusted to the wilaya.

Following in the footsteps of the city of Salé: The capital of the Kingdom is on the way to definitively resolving the waste management issue. Indeed, the municipal council of the city of Rabat has recently adopted the specifications relating to the management of this service. This preparatory step has been taken while awaiting the end of the contract that binds the town hall to the four operators currently in service. According to these specifications, the management of waste containers will be separated from that of collection. The two services will be managed by two different operators. The appointment of the two managers will take place in March 2015.