Nepal pesticide disposal process begins

The process of disposing over 70 tons of hazardous pesticides stored in different locations across Nepal has begun with the first batch of pesticides collected from Amlekhgunj reaching Kalaiya on Sunday for re-packing.

Around 50 tons of pesticides, brought from various European countries in 1973 for agricultural purpose, are stored in Amlekhgunj, Bara, while 12 tons are stored in Nepalgunj, 5 tons in Kathmandu, 4 tons in Pokhara and 3 tons in Biratnagar.

As Nepal government sought international support to dispose the pesticides, the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) stepped in to undertake the costly process (AgroNews 2011-09-15). GIZ plans to destroy the obsolete pesticides taking them to Germany. “We will collect all the pesticides from Amlekhgunj in the next three-four days and will take the pesticides stored in different places of Nepal to Germany within four weeks,” Project Manager of GIZ Wolfgang Schimpt said.

Manager of Agricultural Inputs Corporation Achyut Prasad Poudel said Nepal government couldn´t destroy the pesticides due to financial constraint despite intense public pressure to do so in the past. “This is very costly process and has been possible only due to foreign aid,” Poudel said. The pesticides, including DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), methyl bromide, BHC dust, will reach Germany via the dry port in Birgunj, Kolkata and Malaysia, he informed.

Around 10 persons wearing protective uniform started to load the hazardous pesticides into trucks since early Saturday morning. “The pesticides will remain in Kalaiya for three weeks at most,” Poudel said. But the locals in Kalaiya have already begun protesting the storage of the pesticides in their town. They are complaining of headaches due to the smell of the pesticide.

The locals of Amlekhgunj, who braved the stench of pesticides for a long time, have become happy after the process to remove the hazardous chemicals from their area began.

"We 4,000 Amlekhgunj residents are happier than the day we got democracy back,” Ganga Singh Rawal, a local, said. “We are grateful to those who have agreed to take away the pesticides,” she added. Around 1,000 students of Nepal Rastriya Higher Secondary School, adjacent to the pesticides store, are heaving a sigh of relief. “We can now study at school without any fear of suffering headaches or other health problems,” Suraj Sah, a 10th grader, said.

Environment activists have long been decrying the delay by the government in disposing the hazardous pesticides. They had been living in fear that an accidental leakage of pesticides might affect human health and cause serious damages to the environment, especially because the pesticides have been mostly stored in the vicinity of human settlement.

Nepal is a signatory to Stockholm Convention and Rotterdam Convention, which bans the use of certain chemicals. As per these conventions, such hazardous pesticides should be disposed of by the company that manufactured them. In Nepal´s case, however, most of companies that manufactured pesticides have already closed down. Therefore, Nepal had to request the GIZ for disposing of the pesticides.