Six localities in Hincesti district will be cleaner thanks to a modern sanitation and waste management service. It will serve over 22,000 inhabitants of the villages Carpineni, Mingir, Negrea, Sofia, Bălceana and Voinescu.

The creation of this service was possible thanks to the reorganization of ME “Carpineni Servicii” into an inter-municipal service of waste storage and disposal. A modern garbage truck has been procured, as well as waste bins for households and businesses. Soon, a landfill, with an area and capacity that will allow storing waste for a period of 15 years, will be built.

“In these six communities, there are about 40 unauthorized dump sites that affect the environment. By implementing this project, we intend to optimize the service, to broaden the scope of intervention to have cleaner localities. Until now, the municipal enterprise couldn’t provide such services according to the sector standards, namely for several localities. We now have the waste disposal equipment and press machine, which will optimize and streamline this service,” said Ion Carpineanu, mayor of Carpineni.

The total budget of the project “Cross-border rural network for a clean environment” is of 290,015 Euro. Of this amount, 162,587 Euro were provided by the European Union, as grant, though the Moldova – Ukraine - Eastern Partnership Territorial Cooperation (EaPTC), implemented by the German Development Cooperation through GIZ. 43,000 Euro represents the grant provided by the Government of Switzerland through UNDP Moldova. The contribution from local budgets is about 28,000 Euro, the one from the district council - 17,500 Euro, NGO Speranța - 6,000 Euro, and 3,000 Euro is the amount collected from the natives of the six villages.

“Today, among other Sustainable Development Goals, environment protection is a priority, including for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. It is very positive that both the local authorities in the six localities, as well as the natives, have joined efforts to ensure a prosperous and environmentally safe future,” mentioned Radu Danii, program coordinator at the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation in Moldova.

This is one of the few projects in the country, in the framework of which several localities identify through public consultations a common issue and try to solve it with the help of the natives.

“The natives from Carpineni have also mobilized before to solve other pressing local issues. For the other five partner localities of the project this is their first experience of this kind. The Natives Association of Carpineni shared its experience of managing an association of natives and their involvement in local development. We are glad to see the first outcomes of our joint efforts”, said Vera Papusa, the president of the Association of natives “Carpen-Terra”.

The improved sanitation service was launched at the “Caravan of Cleanliness” event – by signing the inter-municipal cooperation agreement, the presentation of the new equipment purchased and the signature of the first waste disposal contract in one of the partner localities of the project.