CAIRO: Officials at foreign garbage collection companies operating in Egypt have denied press reports published last week alleging the government's intention to terminate their contracts which end in 2018. An employee at the French company FCC for environment services, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, told Daily News Egypt that the company has neither received formal nor an informal notification of the government's intentions to terminate their contract. "We are operating normally; we weren't notified of any modifications to our daily agenda or even changes in the terms of the contract, he said. Furthermore, Mokhtar Aboul Fottouh, head of the press office at the Giza Cleaning and Beautification Agency, denied that the governorate has any intentions to end the agreements. "We had problems with the Italian company this summer. Their repeated failures to carry out their mission resulted in heaps of disgusting garbage piling up on the streets of Giza, but now the company is working at full capacity, Mokhtar said. It was reported that the Ministry of Local Development had decided to terminate contracts with three foreign garbage collection companies after they failed to perform. The Italian sanitation company went on strike three months ago, accusing the Egyptian government of imposing additional unfair fees. But Lamiaa Ali, head of Local Development Ministry's press office, told Daily News Egypt that the government is legally bound by the French companies, so any termination could end up in an "undesirable international arbitration. In 2000, the government started exploring alternatives to traditional garbage collection by adopting a new waste management privatization policy that brought in three companies, one Italian and two Spanish, to collect garbage, clean the streets, build landfills, and recycle charging an annual fee of $500 million to be added to electricity bills.
