By: Sebi Alla

Photos: Atdhe Mulla

Usta Agroni puts some concrete blocks in the car. He builds and feeds himself, but the future of the 42-year-old and his family is put in danger and panic. 

2,800 tons of waste, proven toxic and hazardous, are located no more than 250 meters from the apartment.

 “I’ve been an immigrant for 25 years, I’ve been here for two years, I put all my effort into it. I have two children and I want to raise them, but where can I raise them?! I’ve been an immigrant for 14 years and now that I’ve come I’m thinking of leaving again. We have the remains close by,” says Agron Oka, one of about 300 residents of the “Rinia” neighborhood in Porto Romano.

“I’ve been an immigrant for 25 years, I’ve been here for two years, I put all my effort into it. I have two children and I want to raise them, but where can I raise them?! I’ve been an immigrant for 14 years and now that I’ve come I’m thinking about leaving again. We have the remains close by.”

Since September 2024, 102 containers were placed in the open field (surrounded and guarded by the police), departing from the Elbasan landfill with a destination of Thailand, but were returned with suspicion that they were toxic waste and not “iron oxide” and “zinc oxide” as the documentation indicated. 

Investigations

The Durrës Prosecution Office began investigations in September 2024, but the process was delayed because no state or private laboratory in our country undertook to conduct analyses of suspected toxic waste. 

In the end, it was decided to send some samples found in containers to a laboratory in Italy. The response confirmed the suspicion. 

“The expert report showed that the analyzed material is dust collected from the gas filtration systems of the electric arc furnace (EAF), a process which is clearly included in the scope of subchapter 10 02 of the EWC,” says the Durrës prosecution. 

The prosecution concludes that: “In the samples taken from the seized containers, the companies Kurum International sh.a. and Alliance Resource, the presence of elements (and their compounds) that pose a risk to human health and the environment, related to the risk of toxicity for reproduction and ecotoxicity, especially to aquatic ecosystems, is found.” 

Following the investigations, the prosecution issued 33 arrest warrants for representatives of the “Kurum” company, the “Sokolaj sh.pk” company that undertook the transport of the waste, and three state institutions, the National Environmental Agency, Durres Customs, and the Port Authority.  

Reaction

“Either they remove us, or they remove the waste. Then the state wouldn’t have left anyone here. They say they are cancerous. I don’t know what will happen to them. There are children playing near the area, and cattle graze nearby.”

“Either they remove us, or they remove the remains

“Either they keep us here, or the remains, there is no other way,” says determined Esat Braha, the 71-year-old who lives alone with his wife, while his two sons are in exile. 

“This is the truth, whatever they do to me,” he says without fear. 

Much fear, little voice!

At first they reacted when the suspected toxic waste was placed there, but after it was confirmed that it was toxic, panic is great along with the fear of speaking out, let alone protesting. 

The fear that employees will suffer and others will find out the “side of blackmail” is present on every doorstep. “They are very dangerous, even a cow that came near me would die, but I am not afraid, I do not make a sound, neither do I nor my four sons with their families,” says an elderly woman who in a short time tells you all the vicissitudes of life in Kukës and her arrival in the former swamp. “I tell them this without a camera, the children do not want us to go out,” she says. 

The entire area is dangerous, but the most problematic are a group of apartments that have been waking up and sleeping with the remains of Metarlugjik in Elbasan for more than a year. 

“It’s terrible, but understand that I can’t talk,” says a young man from the vehicle, making signs to his daughter in second grade. “I’m on state business, they’ll disrupt my work if I go out, my child, my brother, the bread of the children,” he continues, apologizing for refusing to go out publicly.