Indian govt apologises for dumping waste

NEW DEHLI: The Indian government has apologised for secretly dumping toxic waste from the 1984 Bhopal gas leak, the world’s worst industrial disaster, in an incinerator two years ago, on Saturday

About 40 tons of toxic waste still at the site of the Union Carbide pesticide plant, that spewed deadly gas over Bhopal city, was taken at night in 2008 to an incinerator at Pithampur 230 kilometres away.

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, in the latest attempt to end controversy over the disaster’s legacy, said the continuing clean-up had to be done openly.

“I admit as minister that it was wrong to have brought those 40 tons of waste to Pithampur,” Ramesh, who did not hold the environment role at the time, told reporters.

“Whatever we do needs to be done with adequate transparency. I am ready to admit publicly that transporting that waste from the Union Carbide factory secretly during the night hours was wrong,” he said.

Rights group calculate that 25,000 people died in the years that followed the tragedy.

A year after poisonous gas from the factory poured into Bhopal’s slums, local authorities collected 350 tons of waste and left it in the factory yard, where most of it still remains there untreated.

The government has vowed to finally clean up the site and to improve compensation after the eruption of public outrage over last month’s court verdicts into who was responsible.

Seven Indian managers were given prison sentences of just two years each, triggering a furious response from survivors’ groups.

Published in The  Express Tribune, July 12^th, 2010.