Note: When the Mayapuri, Delhi incident and incidents regarding radioactive steel came to light, ToxicsWatch Alliance (TWA), examined the legal loopholes and wrote to authorities about how to plug them. Unless hazardous waste trade is banned and India ratifies UN's Ban Amendment to Basel Convention on Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, such incidents will continue to happen.
Commerce Ministry's
complicity and Steel Ministry's silence in the face of tremendous
influence from national and international scrap traders are
institutionally accountable for it. In the absence of radiation
detectors and ban on hazardous waste trade India's maritime borders have
been compromised due to colluding officials and politicians.
Gopal Krishna
TWA
4 years after
leak, Delhi's Mayapuri scrap yard has no radiation detectors
Four years after
the radiation leak of cobalt 60 at the Mayapuri scrap yard,
there is no way yet to detect radiation in the waste market.
Last year, National Green Tribunal had directed the ministry
of environment and forests to install scanners at the gates of
the market. But that proposition seemed expensive, so MoEF
decided that scrap handlers should keep handheld radiation
detectors. But even these have not been procured. In a bid to
prevent accidents from radiation leaks, Delhi Pollution
Control Committee and Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, last
week, directed the waste dealers to buy radiation detectors
immediately.
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