For 12 years, Egyptian authorities have kept quiet about containers holding internationally banned pesticides that are being stored at Adabiya port in Suez, a consumer rights group unveiled Wednesday.
The Quality Control Society for Consumer Protection said it had filed a complaint with the attorney general against the ministers of environment and agriculture, as well as the head of the Red Sea Ports Authority and businessman Abdel Moneim Saudi.
The report accused them of failure to dispose of ten containers carrying internationally-banned insecticide Lindane 10, which the group alleges has been stored at the port since 1999.
Al-Masry Al-Youm obtained a copy of the documents attached to the complaint, which say the shipment arrived in Egypt in 1999, but was denied entry for safety reasons.
The same documents allege that the importer of the shipment, Saudi, is legally responsible, and the ministries of Environment, Finance, Agriculture and Transportation are responsible for disposing of the containers, especially since Saudi has shut down his company.
The containers are highly dangerous and contain radioactive substances that can cause kidney and liver diseases and cancer.
In 2006, a member of parliament brought the issue up, prompting the Environment Ministry to announce in 2007 that the importing company was obliged to return the shipment at its own expense.
But in the same year, it was found that the company had been dissolved in 2005 and was no longer operating in Egypt.
After several statements by the ministries of Agriculture and Environment over 11 years, in which both denied responsibility, then-Suez Governor Mohamed Galal decided to get rid of the containers by burying them at a toxic waste landfill in Alexandria. But environmental experts rejected the plan, fearing that the radioactive substances might leak into groundwater.
Translated from the Arabic Edition
