Various organisations working for the Bhopal gas tragedy survivors have accused the Union government of protecting the multinational companies responsible for the gas disaster which killed over five thousand people in December 1984.
According to Rachna Dhingra of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action (BGIA), “over eighty per cent of the recommendations of the Supreme Court-appointed monitoring committee for medical rehabilitation of Bhopal victims remain to be implemented.’’ A study conducted by community research unit of the Sambhawana Trust said that majority of the gas victims and those affected by contaminated water around the Union Carbide factory are still suffering.
Rachna said the condition remains grim as the funds meant for providing employment to a hundred thousand survivors and their children are being spirited away for building roads, drains and parks by a minister for his electoral constituency. Funds meant to provide safe housing to victims of ground water contamination are also being diverted for the same purpose, she said.
Earlier addressing a press conference on the 34th anniversary of the industrial disaster, the BGIA and three other organisations accused the Union government of not taking enough action against Union Carbide and Dow Chemicals.
Rashida Bee, president of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmchari Sangh, said “The PMO has not taken a single step to stop Union Carbide’s disappearance through the tri-furcation of Dow-DuPont that will begin in two months from now. At the PMO’s grievance portal our letter of February this year (No. PMOPG/D/2018/0084804) stayed pending for last eight months and last week it has been sent to some Under Secretary in Bhopal who in all likelihood is completely clueless about it. Since May 2014 summons issued repeatedly by the Bhopal District court against Dow Chemical, USA to produce absconding Union Carbide, continue to be ignored. The US government’s Department of Justice is obliged to serve the summons on Dow Chemicals under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty signed between India and USA in 1991.”
According to Nausheen Khan of Children Against Dow Carbide, poisonous chemicals continue to leach into the groundwater from thousands of tonnes of hazardous waste buried outside the Union Carbide factory. Since 2004 when the Supreme Court took notice of the second environmental disaster in Bhopal, the contamination has spread to 42 communities around the factory with a population of over one hundred thousand. The governments at the state and the Centre have done nothing to make Dow Chemicals clean up the contamination as it is legally obliged to do according to the laws of India and the USA, he said.
Nawab Khan, president of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha, said “In 2010 the Congress government realised that the Bhopal victims had not been adequately compensated and filed a curative petition in the Supreme Court seeking additional compensation of 1.2 billion dollars. However, neither the Congress nor the BJP governments have filed any application for urgent hearing in the last eight years and the curative petition has not moved an inch since it was filed.”
