German company GIZ, which has offered to airlift the highly-dangerous toxic waste from Union Carbide’s Bhopal plant for disposal in Germany, has raised “doubts” about the logistic support facilities at Bhopal airport for handling of such sophisticated cargo to avoid any environment problem.
The Centre, which though had decided to engage GIZ for disposing the 350 tonnes of highly-dangerous toxic waste of methyl isocyanate left in the UCIL plant after the 1984 gas leak disaster, has left it to the company to make independent assessment of the airport facilities.
In order to have “environmentally safe” disposal of the hazardous waste from Union Cabride’s site for incineration facility in Germany, GIZ’s technical experts were asked to prepare a detailed proposal as to how the entire operation would be carried out by it, a seven-member GoM on Bhopal gas disaster in its decision had said.
“They shall collect all the technical details, site inspection, air lifting from Bhopal airport, capacities of the new airport in handling the cargo plane both landing and loading, safe packaging services, handling local logistics and other parameters required. Once we receive the clear mandate, it will take two weeks time to submit the detailed proposal, including cost estimates, time frame and scope of service,” the minutes of the meeting of the GoM placed before the Supreme Court stated.
GIZ was asked to submit its assessment report to the Madhya Pradesh government with details about its proposed operation to lift the toxic waste. The state government would forward the same to the GoM, headed by union home minister P. Chidambaram for the final approval.
The GoM comprising five other Central ministers — Kapil Sibal, Kamal Nath, Salman Khurshid, Kumari Selja and Jayanti Natrajan and MP’s department of Bhopal gas tragedy relief and rehabilitation minister Babu Lal Gaur — would then have a detailed discussion on the GIZ’s proposal before giving approval to it.
The SC had asked the company to take the assistance of the Central Pollution Control Board, MP state pollution control board and union ministries of environment and forest and chemicals and petro-chemicals in preparing its operational plan.