Minister of Transportation and Public Works Ghazi Zoaiter took blame on Sunday for the trash that flooded the streets of the country following the heavy rainfall in the morning, reported Voice of Lebanon radio (93.3).

He told the station: “I assume responsibility in my position as minister of public works, but I have for months warned of an environmental disaster after the first rainfall.”

The garbage that has been piling up on the sides of the streets in Lebanon in the past months flooded the streets of the capital and other areas, exacerbating traffic and floods as trash plugged gutters.

Zoaiter lamented the current situation in Lebanon, saying that he is “willing to cooperate with all sides in any way possible so that the people do not pay the price.”

He added however that municipalities had resorted to dumping garbage in the streets, noting that they too should be blamed for the ongoing crisis.

He urged the concerned ministerial committee to take a decision regarding the garbage disposal crisis soon, “because we are only at the beginning of the winter season.”

In the evening, anti-trash civil society activists staged a sit-in at the Riad al-Solh Square in downtown Beirut before marching to Prime Minister Tammam Salam's residence in Msaitbeh.

"The government's corruption has led to the current garbage crisis ... Officials must resign if they can't address the crisis," protest organizer Ayman Mroueh said in Riad al-Solh.

"The negligent political authorities are the Lebanese people's enemy," he added.

Outside Salam's residence, the activists demanded accountability and measures from the government, vowing to escalate their protests if the premier does not move to address the crisis.

"We tell the Lebanese to wait for our moves and be with us on Thursday for a protest whose details will be announce in the right time. We want to tell the ruling class that enough is enough," a protest organizer declared.

The country has been in the grip of a months-long trash crisis caused by the government shutting down the country's main landfill in Naameh without finding an alternative.

Political bickering and the refusal of various municipalities to accept Beirut's trash have prolonged the crisis.

The crisis has ignited mass protests against the government, which has failed to provide a number of basic services and is widely seen as corrupt and dysfunctional.

Activists from the You Stink movement, which has been leading the protests, shared videos on their Facebook page of plastic trash bags and other garbage floating down a narrow street lined with cars.

The Beirut River, where garbage had been piling up on the banks for months, resembled an open sewer. Activists from You Stink braved rain and volunteered to help clean it on Sunday, which could revive the anti-government campaign in the country.

In September, the government approved an emergency plan devised by Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb and a team of experts which calls for waste management to be turned over to municipalities in 18 months, the setting of two “sanitary landfills” in Akkar and the Bekaa, and the reopening for seven days of the controversial Naameh landfill south of Beirut.