In September 2001, the European Commission (EC) supported a strategy by the Lebanese Government to reform the public administration through OMSAR by providing it with a grant to finance its program entitled “Assistance to the Rehabilitation of the Lebanese Administration (ARLA)”. The implementation of this program, valued at € 38 M was planned over a period of 6 years and aimed to provide support to central Agencies, Ministries and Municipalities. In 2003, the program was modified to include projects related to the solid waste management (SWM) delivered by the municipalities with a budget of 10.2 million Euros.

By 2005, the total budget specified for these projects had increased to € 14.2 M and ARLA’s duration extended beyond the 6 years initially planned. The project’s objective aimed to improve local services through the implementation of municipal SWM projects that include collection, transfer, sorting, composting, and treatment of municipal solid waste. As such, 17 projects were executed in different municipalities. Following the success of these projects, OMSAR launched the “Solid Waste Management Program” (SWMP) with additional funding from the EU.

Under this Program, two projects, SWAM I and SWAM II, were respectively approved by the Council of Minister in 2013 (Decree No. 735) and 2015 (Decree No. 2015). The intervention locations were chosen in accordance with the National Plan for SWM agreed upon by the CoM via Decision No. 1 dated 28/6/2006 and later amended in September 2010 (Decision No. 5 dated 1/9/2010).

The financing agreement for SWAM I was signed in 2014. The target was to support the geographical locations that were highly impacted from the influx of Syrian refugees through upgrading the solid waste management infrastructure. The program is projected to complete by the end of the year 2020.

The Financing agreement for SWAM II was signed in 2016 with the objective to support wide spread geographical locations in the country through upgrading the solid waste management infrastructure through “Engineering Design for SW treatment facilities and waste characterization services”.

Also, in order to ensure the sound operations of the MBTs and the sanitary landfills, OMSAR secured funding from the Government of Lebanon for this purpose as of 2010. As such,  the operations are monitored on a regular basis to ensure compliance with TORs and specifications and to prevent and minimize environmental, health, and safety impacts.