An Indian firm plans to burn toxic waste from the Bhopal disaster, the world's worst industrial accident, despite environmentalists' objections.
The firm, Bharuch Environ Infrastructure Ltd, said burning the waste poses no threat.
"We have the best waste disposal facility and it is child's play for us, " Rajju Shroff, BEIL's chairman, said on Tuesday.
A 1984 leak of methyl isocyanate gas from a Bhopal pesticide plant run by a subsidiary of the US chemical company Union Carbide killed at least 10,000 people and affected about 550,000 others.
Survivors have since been fighting to get the site cleaned up, but say their efforts were slowed when Union Carbide was taken over by Michigan-based Dow Chemical Co in 2001, seven years after Union Carbide sold its interest in the Bhopal plant.
Dow has maintained that it is not responsible for cleaning up the site, and the plant is now under the control of India's Madhya Pradesh state, which has agreed to pay BEIL US$220,000 to dispose of the waste.
Punjwani said 350 tonnes of waste will be transported from Bhopal to Ankleshwar, an industrial area in the western state of Gujarat, by July. It will then be burned at high temperatures over the course of a week.
Environmentalists objected to disposal of the waste in Ankleshwar, and said BEIL was not up to the task.
"Frankly, we doubt the ability of the company to be able to dispose of such waste," said Rohit Prajapati, head of the Environment Protection Committee. "Let them take the waste to America and do what they want with it there."
Tens of thousands of survivors have suffered the aftereffects of inhaling the noxious fumes in 1984.
In 1989, Union Carbide paid US$470 million in compensation to victims and said responsibility for the cleanup lay with officials.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in
REGIONAL TENSIONS: China boosted spending on its military for the 29th straight year, raising it by 6% to US$296bn, while Taiwan spent US$16.6bn, an 11% increase Global military expenditure recorded its steepest increase in over a decade last year, reaching an all-time high of US$2.4 trillion as wars and rising tensions fueled spending across the world, researchers said yesterday. Military spending rose across the globe with particularly large increases in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, according to a new report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). “Total military spending is at an all-time high ... and for the first time since 2009, we saw spending increase across all five geographical regions,” SIPRI senior researcher Nan Tian said. Military spending rose by 6.8 percent last year, the