Wastewater treatment: ‘Italian mafia’ role denied

Manama : Refuting the corruption allegations of an alleged employee of Works, Municipalities Affairs and Urban Planning Ministry, MP Jamal Buhassan yesterday clarified that no ‘Italian Mafia’ is dominating the wastewater treatment industry in Bahrain.

The man had accused the Ministry of contracting with an Italian-based company to treat sludge at Tubli Wastewater Treatment Plant.

He claimed that the company is “a branch of the Italian Mafia that is hijacking millions of Bahraini public money annually.”

The person alleged that the company is benefiting from multi-million dinars deals that are inked with the Ministry, despite the firm’s “inefficient” work of treating wastewater.

“These allegations are exaggerated,” said Jamal Buhassan, who is also the Deputy Chairman of Foreign Affairs, Defence and National Security Parliamentary Committee.

Speaking to DT News, the MP said he had clarified the matter with Works, Municipalities Affairs and Urban Planning Minister Essam Khalaf.

MP Buhassan denied the intense corruption accusations made by the unidentified employee, but at the same time he confirmed that “part of the information he mentioned is true to some extent, but from a narrow perspective.”

Meanwhile, DT News received a letter from the man yesterday. It contained accusations against the Ministry of “being kept in the dark, while the company, in association with corrupted employees at the Ministry, is draining its funding.”

The man, who was keen on preserving his anonymity, refused to give further clarifications. 

But what seems to be grinding his gears is that the company is still receiving the same amounts (a couple of millions allegedly) from the Ministry, even after it reduced its daily production of sludge treatment from over 50 tonnes to 10 – 15 tonnes nowadays.

Clarifying this, MP Buhassan quoted the Minister as saying that “it’s true that the amount of treated sludge has reduced to around 15 tonnes a day, but that’s due to the incapability of the available equipment and the Ministry is aware of it.”

“The Ministry is concerned about the higher interest of the nation and it had conveyed to the company that daily sludge treatment rates should be promptly restored. But, the available equipment requires maintenance. Work at such a major treatment plant couldn’t be halted. Not even for a day,” MP Buhassan remarked.

The man also accused the company, which he described and its alleged associates in the Ministry as a “gang”, of monopolising the wastewater treatment industry.

He claimed that “despite the poor performance of the company, the Ministry has renewed a multi-million contract with it,” adding that “the contract is renewable for the next 10 years and this monopolism is the result of the work of the secret lobbies in the Ministry.”

But this was denied by the officials. “There’re no competent companies at the meantime that could handle the work at the plant. But this doesn’t mean that tenders wouldn’t be introduced annually. There’s no monopolism here and the matter is handled and supervised in a transparent manner by the Tender Board and not the Ministry,” Buhassan added, while quoting the Minister.

As reported earlier, the plant has the capacity of 200,000 cubic metres of wastewater a day. 

Minister Khalaf announced last month that the Ministry was studying a scheme to increase the plant’s capacity to 400, 000 cubic metres a day. This plan comes to cope with the rapid growth of the country’s population.