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Unfortunately, greed transcends national boundaries and responsibilities.
----- Original Message -----
From: Aggo Akyea <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Friday, November 24, 2006 10:33 am
Subject: Yet Another Sad Story of Africans against Africans ... When, Oh When, Africa!!!
To: [log in to unmask]
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> Web: www.AfricanAssociation.org
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> Ivory Coast officials blamed for lethal toxic slick
>
> By Lydia Polgreen
> The New York Times
>
> Mismanagement, negligence and fraud by government agencies and private
> companies led to the dumping of a highly toxic cocktail of
> petrochemical waste in Ivory Coast in August, according to a
> government report issued there Thursday.
>
> At least 10 people died and thousands were sickened after chemical
> waste pumped from a tanker chartered by a Netherlands-based oil
> trading company was dumped across Abidjan, the capital of Ivory Coast,
> in the main landfill and near poor residential neighborhoods.
>
> Citing the "lack of rigorous management, failure to observe
> professional ethics and nonapplication of regulations," the report
> concluded that officials at the city's port and in several government
> ministries responsible for monitoring the shipping and handling of
> waste and petroleum allowed the chain of events that led to the
> dumping, despite repeated red flags.
>
> The waste arrived in Abidjan on Aug. 19 aboard the Probo Koala, a
> Greek- owned tanker flying a Panamanian flag and leased by Trafigura,
> an oil trading corporation. The tanker carried a toxic mix of
> chemicals that the ship had already tried to dispose of in Amsterdam
> in July, saying the waste was ordinary slop from cleaning the tanks of
> petroleum products. But workers in Amsterdam's port refused to take
> the waste for the initial price, $15,000, saying it was toxic and
> would require special disposal.
>
> Instead of paying the more than $300,000 it would cost to dispose of
> the waste in Europe, the ship sailed a circuitous route that included
> stops in Estonia and Nigeria, eventually arriving in Abidjan, where a
> subsidiary of Trafigura, Puma Energie, arranged to have the waste
> disposed of by Tommy, a local company.
>
> The report identified Tommy, which agreed to dispose of the waste for
> $20,000, and its manager, Salomon Ugborugbo, as mainly responsible for
> the dumping. The company had "neither the qualifications, the
> competence or the technical ability to treat this waste."
>
> The report said Tommy "was created during the same period when the
> Probo Koala left Holland for the Ivory Coast," and that it had "had
> all appearances of a shell company created for the circumstance."
>
> Before the waste arrived, Ugborugbo wrote an electronic message to a
> Trafigura official, saying that he had found a place "outside the city
> called 'Akwedo' where he would dump the products," the report said.
> Akouedo is the city landfill surrounded by poor neighborhoods and
> frequented by thousands of people who make a living picking recyclable
> items from the trash. Once the waste arrived, Tommy hired 12 tanker
> trucks, paying them about $250 each, and sent them to dump the
> material in Akouedo, according to the report. But the material ended
> up being dumped in more than a dozen sites across the city.
>
> Trafigura said in a statement Thursday that it was aware of the
> report, but was not ready to comment on it. The company said it "will
> continue to cooperate fully with all relevant authorities
> investigating this matter."
>
> Earlier this month, Trafigura appointed a British lawyer, Peter
> Fraser, to conduct an inquiry into the Probo Koala dumping. Trafigura
> has already said in statements that it complied with local and
> international laws, and that its own analysis of the chemicals on
> board the ship showed that they were not toxic.
>
> But other experts, including one at the University of Amsterdam who
> examined test results from waste samples, disagreed, saying the
> analysis showed extremely high levels of caustic soda; mercaptans, a
> kind of sulfur compound; and hydrogen sulfide.
>
> Ugborugbo, a Nigerian, has been jailed in Ivory Coast pending criminal
> charges, as have two European officials and several Ivorian businessmen.
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Copyright © 2006 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
>
>
>
> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
> Aggo Akyea
> http://www.tribalpages.com/tribes/akyea
>
> "Instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my
> baskets,
> I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them."
> WALDEN by Henry David Thoreau – 1854
>
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