First four garbage trucks, bought by Mykolaiv-based European Ecological Technologies (EuroEcoTech) in Russia for a total of $270,000, have just cleared customs and are being registered with the State Automobile Inspection, the company told LED Monitor on Thursday.
EuroEcoTech Director Valentyn Rehida said the vehicles will start collecting municipal solid waste (MSW) in this Southern-Ukrainian city from Jan. 1, 2007. As more customers – enterprises, housing maintenance offices, condominiums, owners of private houses – conclude contracts with the company, it will buy more garbage trucks.
According to the CEO, EuroEcoTech was established in September 2006 on the initiative of City Mayor Volodymyr Chayka in fulfillment of his election program. The program provided for creation of an MSW management system including a plant for refuse processing, and so the mayor was looking for investors willing to venture on this business.
EuroEcoTech has already applied to the City Rada for allotment of land for construction of an MSW treatment plant. If the Rada takes a positive decision, and a land plot is allotted within the first half of the next year, the company expects to have the plant constructed before 2009. “Generally, we are planning to buy a plant [for sorting and treatment of municipal solid waste] from the Spain-based company Imabe Iberica,” Mr. Rehida specified.
So far, the company has invested in the project more than UAH 5 million (approx. $1 million), and created 18 jobs. The total project costs, including construction of the plant, are estimated to exceed UAH 50 million, and the number of jobs created will then approach 200, the director reported.
Although established on the initiative of the mayor, the company is a private enterprise doing its business independently, without any agreement with, and interventions of, the city hall. “We don’t claim any municipally-owned property, and don’t expect any financial support from the city,” said Rehida.
Irkin Baltayev, advisor to the Mykolaiv mayor, told LED Monitor earlier the same day that EuroEcoTech is not the only company engaging in MSW collection in Mykolaiv; there are at least six private businesses and one communal enterprise. Nonetheless, he said a “certain vacuum [in the MSW collection business] has formed in the city, resulting from the fact that there’s been no re-equipment for a long time. The municipality has a host of other projects to put money in. Therefore we invite: please come with your capital and develop this business based on sound competition.”
Mr. Baltayev confirmed that the private companies operate without any agreement with the city. First, he said, an agreement would be a breach of law, as it would give rise to a monopoly. “And second, we’re not suicides: if we eliminate competition, then the monopolist whom we are going to create will dictate terms to us.”
“EuroEcoTech is not the first robin but they have serious intents, and I hope we’ll come out to a good result,” he summed up.
Mykolaiv is one of the cities that drafted their economic development strategic plans with assistance from the USAID Local Economic Development project. A Business Attitude Survey, conducted in the city in the process of strategic planning, revealed that respondents rated MSW collection as the worst of ten municipal cervices they evaluated.
The draft Mykolaiv Economic Development Strategic Plan, now pending in the City Rada, focuses on three critical issues: development of small and medium enterprise and infrastructure for business; development of communal infrastructure; and investment attraction.
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