Bhopal Disaster: action needed twenty five years on - Watson (Forest of Dean Liberal Democrats)

Forest of Dean Liberal Democrats <hdalziel@cix.co.uk>

Bhopal Disaster: action needed twenty five years on - Watson

December 1, 2009 12:00 AM
Originally published by Sir Graham Watson MEP

Graham Watson MEP (South West of England and Gibraltar), Chair of the European Parliament's India delegation, has tabled a Written Declaration on the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal Disaster urging the Indian government and the company responsible for it to ensure the immediate decontamination of the site.

Watson said:

"The failure to decontaminate the Bhopal site and the inadequate 1989 compensation package mean that the terrible impact of the disaster continues to echo down the generations.

"Dow Chemicals should take responsibility for the clean up of the site, the Indian and Madhya Pradesh governments should ensure that they do, and the European Commission should offer its full support where that is needed.

"This incident must not be forgotten. On the twenty fifth anniversary of Bhopal, I am pleased that MEPs are coming together to make sure that it is not."

ENDS.

NOTES TO EDITORS

Thursday 3 December 2009 marks the twenty fifth anniversary of the Bhopal disaster.

The disaster took place at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in the Indian city of Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. At midnight on 3 December 1984, the plant accidentally released methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas, exposing more than 500,000 people to MIC and other chemicals.

The first official immediate death toll was 2,259. The government of Madhya Pradesh has confirmed a total of 3,787 deaths related to the gas release. Others estimate 8,000-10,000 died within 72 hours and 25,000 have since died from gas-related diseases.

Some 25 years after the gas leak, 390 tonnes of toxic chemicals abandoned at the Union Carbide plant continue to pollute the ground water in the region and affects thousands residents of Bhopal who depend on it.

There are currently civil and criminal cases related to the disaster ongoing in the United States District Court, Manhattan and the District Court of Bhopal, India against Union Carbide, now owned by Dow Chemical Company, with arrest warrants pending against Warren Anderson, CEO of Union Carbide at the time of the disaster.