VAATC and the Vilnius City Municipality frequently claim that waste carriers had to wait in long queues while the Vilnius waste treatment plant was operated by Energesman. What they fail to mention is that, in June, VAATC refused to launch the electronic queue management system installed this spring. The system would have regulated traffic flows and carriers arriving according to schedule would not have had to wait. The launch of the system was halted after a change in VAATC’s management.
The implemented solution is being omitted
“An extraordinary degree of cynicism is required to stand up at a meeting of the Committee on Environment and City Services and blame someone else when you yourself deliberately refused to improve the situation. Employees had already been trained to use the queue management system, but VAATC intentionally refused to launch it so that the queue problem would remain,” says Algirdas Blazgys, CEO of Energesman.
On 18 March this year, VAATC signed a contract with UAB Teracode, operating under the Logifly brand, to install an electronic queue management system at the Vilnius waste treatment plant for use by waste carriers. The contract value amounted to EUR 8,800.
Public procurement contract: https://viespirkiai.org/sutartis/2008048337
Project halted after the appointment of a new VAATC CEO
The system was scheduled to become operational on 1 June. Display columns had already been installed at the plant entrance and connected to the network. Energesman had ordered and connected the modems and internet service, and the system had been fully tested.
Employees of both VAATC and Energesman, including the logistics manager and weighbridge operators, had been trained to use the system. The only remaining step was to provide training for the carriers, and the queue issue could have been resolved in June.
However, after Marius Švaikauskas became CEO of VAATC on 28 May, the project was suddenly suspended and has never been launched.
“This can only happen in one situation: when you arrive with the goal of removing the operator rather than working together with it. There is no other explanation for such actions,” Mr Blazgys emphasizes.
Priority for carriers arriving according to schedule
Under the installed system, carriers arriving at the waste sorting plant would scan a QR code. The system would automatically create two separate queues. The first queue would be for carriers arriving at their designated time according to a pre-agreed schedule. The second queue would be for carriers arriving earlier or later than their allocated time.
Priority for unloading waste would be given to carriers arriving on time. As a result, they would not have had to wait in the general queue.
“This would have solved the core problem: some carriers arrive not according to the agreed schedule but at a time convenient for them, which creates congestion and leads to waiting times,” Mr Blazgys explains.
Records show that in the period following the fire, 50% of carriers arrived outside their allocated time slot—meaning every second waste collection vehicle. This disadvantaged carriers that arrived on time, as they still had to wait in the common queue.
Energesman, for its part, consistently complied with the schedule established by the Emergency Operations Centre, which required the plant to receive at least six waste collection vehicles per hour. This meant that each vehicle was allocated ten minutes for weighing and unloading waste.
No violations by Energesman related to non-compliance with this schedule have been recorded.
Among the carriers was a company seeking to acquire the operator
It is important to note that the majority of waste from the Vilnius region is collected and transported by Ecoservice and Ekonovus.
It was Ecoservice that, through one of its executives and via a third party, submitted an offer to Energesman’s shareholder to purchase the company’s shares. The offer was made just a few days before VAATC announced a warning of its intention to terminate its contracts with Energesman.