Mining giant under the gun
(AGN) – A human rights complaint against the British subsidiary of the mining giant Glencore “merits further examination” according to a monitoring group that looked into a toxic wastewater spill in the north central African nation of Chad.
Dozens of villagers – including children – claim they suffered severe burns, skin lesions and sickness after contact with contaminated water.
The complaint was brought before Britain’s Dept. of International Trade by three human rights groups. It alleges environmental abuses in relation to two serious spillages – a wastewater spill when an earth bank supporting a wastewater basin at the Badila oilfield collapsed, and an alleged oil spill, both in 2018.
In the wastewater spill, the equivalent of 34 Olympic-sized swimming pools of contaminated water overran fields and a local river, killing livestock and fish and causing at least 50 local people to fall sick with skin lesions, vomiting and diarrhea, the groups say.
Residents claim the wastewater basin had been leaking for weeks before it collapsed. They said Glencore failed to properly address the problem or to warn local residents about the impending danger, and Glencore has still not acknowledged the harm caused or provided a remedy, they allege. A few weeks after the incident, residents also reported an oil pipe leak, which is contested by the company.
Glencore is expected to challenge all the claims.
Anneke Van Woudenberg, head of Rights and Accountability in Development (Raid) declared: “For more than a year we tried, along with organizations in Chad, to get Glencore UK to investigate these claims and to compensate those affected. And although they’ve made promises, none of them have resulted in any remedy, nor has there been an independent investigation into what happened. This is why we launched the complaint.
“No community, whether they are in a remote area of Chad or elsewhere, should have to wait more than two and a half years for a company to investigate whether its toxic spill caused injury, especially when it involves so many children.”
Raid published a detailed report about the alleged abuses in March last year.
In an unrelated development, Royal Dutch Shell has been ordered to pay damages to Nigerian farmers after an appeals court found the company’s Nigerian subsidiary liable for oil spills in the Niger Delta more than a decade ago.
By Lisa Vives
