India has given the go-ahead for the disposal in Germany of toxic waste from a chemical plant in Bhopal, the site of the world's worst industrial disaster, officials said Thursday. A gas leak at the Union Carbide Corp plant in the capital of the central state of Madhya Pradesh in 1984 killed at least 15,000 people.
An Indian federal ministerial panel recently approved in principle the plan for the German government's international development agency, GIZ, to dispose of 350 tons of the waste, Madhya Pradesh Gas Relief and Rehabilitation Minister Babulal Gaur said. GIZ spokesman Hans Stehling confirmed the negotiations were ongoing. "We have proven in the past decades that we are capable of safely disposing of the waste," he said.
The waste at the defunct factory is not connected with the deadly methyl isocyanate gas that claimed thousands of lives but comes from the indiscriminate dumping of chemicals from 1969 to 1984, media reports said. Although the methyl isocyanate stored in tanks was neutralised, thousands of people continue to suffer from the contamination of soil and groundwater as well as toxic material at the 27-hectare complex, the Indian Express newspaper reported.
Alternative sites in India were proposed for the disposal but plans did not materialise as environmentalists warned of health hazards during incineration. "The group of ministers has asked for GIZ to submit a detailed proposal for the next meeting on June 8," Gaur said, adding that the agency offered to dispose of the waste near Hamburg in northern Germany. "The federal government will then finalise the costs and other modalities."
Campaigners have criticised the move, saying it would allow US-based Dow Chemical Co, which took over Union Carbide in 2001, to escape its responsibilities to clean up the toxic waste. They have also questioned what authorities plan to do with an estimated 27,000 tons of waste under the plant, which they said, continues to poison people in Bhopal.
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