A few days ago, the Elbasan Municipal Council approved the new contract with the waste management company "Eco-Elb", only with the votes of the majority and under the strong opposition of opposition councilors.
The new one-year contract again stipulates that the Municipality of Elbasan will pay a fee of 2,600 lek for the disposal of each ton of waste in the landfill, while the public company "Eco-Elb" has almost never incinerated waste, as the incinerator is completely non-functional.
Since 2022, when the company "Eco-Elb" took over the Elbasan landfill and incinerator from the concession company "Albtek Energy", the municipality of Elbasan and the six other municipalities in the region have paid the fee of 2600 lek per ton, which included the deposit, processing and incineration of urban waste, while the latter process has never been completed.
After the opposition has often raised its voice about the inflated payment, due to the lack of an incinerator, the Municipality of Elbasan and "Eco-Elb", in 2025, removed the term "incineration" from the contract, but the tariff did not change, raising suspicions that it creates an abusive financial burden on citizens.
The Democratic Party's Chief Advisor to the Elbasan Municipal Council, Bianka Çopja, is convinced that the Municipality of Elbasan has committed serious financial abuses through the contract with "Eco-Elb" shpk, the company run by Leli Kaja, appointed to that position by the Mayor, Gledian Llatja.
For more than two years, Çopja has requested official information from the Municipality of Elbasan on the financial situation of "Eco-Elb", as well as "to provide full transparency on the financial damage caused by the company's failure to implement the contract, to stop payments for unperformed services, and to establish the illegality of the Municipality of Elbasan's inaction in protecting financial and public interests."
Faced with complete silence from the Municipality of Elbasan, the opposition councilor has addressed the Administrative Court of First Instance, Tirana, requesting that the Municipality of Elbasan be forced to provide the requested information and, above all, to order the suspension of payments, considered "abusive" for the city's non-functional incinerator.
Lawsuit: Stop abusive payments
Judge Hazbi Balliu has been selected to review Ms. Çopja's lawsuit against the Municipality of Elbasan, filed on March 25, 2026.
The requests that the Democratic advisor is making to the Court could completely change the course of abusive payments, if the adjudicating body deems them justified.
According to the document, obtained by "Boldnews.al", the plaintiff has at least three main demands:
– Obligation of the defendant, the Municipality of Elbasan, in its capacity as Public Authority, to immediately review the contractual relationship and ascertain the invalidity of the contracts for the years 2022, 2023, 2024, and onwards for waste management between the Municipality of Elbasan and the company “Eco-Elb” sh.a., with regard to the process of incineration and treatment-selection at the source of waste, as processes that were not carried out by the company Eco-Elb sh.a.;
– Obligation of the defendant, the Municipality of Elbasan, in the capacity of the contractor (Client), to provide full transparency on the financial damage caused by the company's failure to implement the contract, to terminate payments for unperformed services, as well as the finding of the illegality of the failure of the Municipality of Elbasan to act in the protection of financial and public interests; as well as:
– Obliging the defendant to take legal action to initiate procedures for the recovery of economic damage and the return of public funds unjustly paid for services not performed;
According to the plaintiff, the situation is urgent and, for this reason, she has an additional request in the lawsuit, where she asks the Administrative Court to take the measure of securing the lawsuit, suspending any payment to be made by the Municipality of Elbasan to "Eco-Elb", until the merits of the case are reviewed.
Çopja: Llatja, zero transparency for the incinerator
Plaintiff Bianka Çopja informs the court about the series of refusals that the Municipality of Elbasan and "Eco-Elb" have made to her personally and to the democratic councilors in the city's Municipal Council, for the information requested through legal channels.
"Despite the plaintiff's requests for transparency and to be informed about the activity of the waste plant and transparency on financial expenses, both the Contracting Authority and the representatives of the Municipality of Elbasan never took them seriously and did not provide any explanation regarding the functioning of the Elbasan landfill," the lawsuit states.
Recalling that the Elbasan landfill has been engulfed in fires several times due to overflowing beyond capacity, Councilor Çopja tells the court:
"In the capacity of an advisor and in the exercise of the constitutional and legal function, on behalf of the seven advisors of the opposition of the Democratic Party entity, the activity was intensified, with the aim of making the administrative legal actions fully transparent and information was officially requested on the expenses incurred and a copy of the contract made between the Municipality of Elbasan and the company Eco-Elb sh.a, repeating the request for information and briefing several times. But, again, the representatives of Elbasan did not respond, constantly avoiding and escaping legal responsibilities. To this day, they have not responded, which forced the plaintiff to go to court."
"The ghost incinerator"
The plaintiff, in her capacity as a candidate for member of the Elbasan City Council, together with the six opposition councilor candidates, states that during 2023, she held electoral meetings with residents of the area in the field to listen to their problems and concerns.
Bianka Çopja writes in the lawsuit that, during meetings with residents who live near the waste disposal site in Elbasan, some of them complained and raised concerns that their residence there had become uninhabitable due to the bad smell coming from the landfill. Unlike the demonstration carried out by the Mayor, who is also a candidate for Mayor of the city of Elbasan.
"Citizens informed us that the plant has not been functioning for a long time and abuses with the waste plant were evident due to the high mountain of waste and citizens also informed us that the Mayor's act of turning on the plant was to deceive public opinion. One of the citizens who could have been an employee at the waste plant stated that the incinerator is not working, that the landfill capacities have been exceeded and that recyclable waste is being sold privately," the lawsuit by municipal councilor Bianka Çopja states, among other things.
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