Editorial

Throwing your garbage over the backyard fence to keep your own property clean and tidy was an unsavoury old practice. With greater habitation and awareness of sanitation standards, it is now rightly condemned, whether in big cities and nation-states, or in households.

Yet when Colombo decided to fix its mounting rubbish heaps, it was decided to dump all the garbage in Puttalam. The people of the north-west coastal town naturally were irate. These last two weeks, Sri Lanka has opened its eyes to the prospect of being another dumping ground for the First (economic) World.

The 130 containers of blood soaked mattresses and soiled linen, which the BOI (Board of Investment) simplifies in its statement to “mattresses, used carpets etcetera” also include “clinical waste” which some claim can mean even human bones among other items from British hospitals with no admitted consignee. It seems a ghost shipment that has arrived now that the details have surfaced. It also seems it is not the first time.

In a country where no one accepts responsibility when things go wrong, the BOI, the Central Environment Authority (CEA), the Customs, the importer/exporter and the warehouse owner are all wringing their hands saying “not us”.

But the rubbish is there to see. Orders from the BOI to re-ship the consignment do not say where to, while the CEA, and now the Finance Ministry want it shipped back to the country of origin (UK). Cabinet Ministers also make post-fiasco chest-thumping statements but their words turning into action is remote. Earlier this year, the Philippines President who our President wanted to emulate in certain aspects, ordered 69 containers of garbage shipped from Canada mislabelled as plastics for recycling that had been rotting in the Philippines for years to be sent back. When Canada missed the deadline to take back the shipment, Manila withdrew some of its diplomats from Ottawa and asked the shipper to leave the garbage in Canada’s territorial waters if it refused to accept the consignment of old diapers, newspapers, water bottles and plastics. Canada finally took back the consignment.

To expect Sri Lanka to emulate the Philippine action is asking for too much. The Government this very week came under flak in Parliament, and quite rightly so, for even considering a request from a UN Special Rapporteur to interview the Chief Justice and some High Court judges over certain pending cases.

But pressure is mounting worldwide. China has clamped down on huge amounts of waste being shipped there, especially from United States. Malaysia and Cambodia became the latest Asian countries to reject shipments of waste labelled as “recyclable products” sent from the US and Canada.

The draft Singapore FTA did have a clause on the disposal of waste material through an economic free trade agreement, however much the Government tries to deny it. This, if nothing else, highlights the fact that this subject now comes within the ambit of even legitimate international trade.

The First (economic) World countries dumping their waste far away from their shores and their soil is not something entirely new. France, for instance, was condemned for dumping more than 3,200 tonnes of radioactive waste and conducting nuclear tests in Polynesia not too long ago. The radioactive gases and the plutonium trapped in the sediments at the bottom of the ocean were to cause immense harm to those living in the atolls. France wanted to buy its way out of the problem by offering financial compensation.

Older Sri Lankans will recall the ‘bale’ (used garments sent in bales from the West) that came ostensibly as ‘aid’. Poorer countries were made to thank the economically better-off West when, in fact, it was a favour that helped the West get rid of its used products. There was also a time when those visiting the island’s famed beaches would find tar on their soles — this from the discharge of super tankers and cargo ships that plied past the Sri Lankan coast.

Such blatantly damaging activities by the industrialised West that caused the economically poor to pay with their lives in the process, have, at times, met with resistance. In the heyday of the Non-Aligned Movement, they exerted some pressure on these countries calling for a New Economic Order. Two senior Sri Lankan diplomats were in the forefront of the world stage viz., Shirley Amarasinghe as chairman of the UN Conference on the Law of the Sea and Gamani Corea as secretary general of UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

By 1992, the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal came into being, putting in place obligations on nation-states taking their garbage and dumping it in someone else’s space. By then e-waste from the growing advancement of e-technology was becoming a high risk factor to human health and the environment.

There is the typical blame-game going on now that the lid has come off the latest waste container scandal. Politicians have entered the fray – some blaming this government for its ineptitude in letting these shipments in; some blaming the former President for allowing a legal loophole that permitted tax-free import allowances for goods to be brought in for “value addition” and subsequent sale to other (usually poor) countries. Still others say this scheme came even earlier during the tenure of President Chandrika Kumaratunga with the TIEP scheme – the Temporary Import for Export Processing, permitting businesses to obtain relief from customs duties and VAT.

Sri Lanka, like many countries of the economically developing world is desperate to attract Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs). Some countries, a mere four hours flying time from here, have no qualms about accepting monies in secret bank accounts and in real estate siphoned off the poor countries through kick-backs from mega-projects and scams. In the process of attracting these FDIs, unscrupulous businessmen take advantage of politicians they support.

President Maithripala Sirisena was in both those governments, but one cannot blame him over those Gazette notifications that opened the door for these importers to take advantage of our loopholes and lax scrutiny (and/or corruption) at entry ports. This week, new laws were introduced to the Companies Act so that the country’s standing in the ‘Doing Business Index’ of the World Bank improves. President Sirisena is the Executive President right now and launched a much advertised “vasa visa nathi ratak’’ and cannot say the 19th Amendment has whittled down his powers to take stern action. He is the Environment Minister as well attending various international conferences on the subject. He must show his mettle; that he has a backbone.

There is a sense that this government is suffering from paralysis. And there are those who profit from such situations.  The general mood in the country seems to be to shrug one’s shoulders and think that here again, like with other festering issues, nothing is going to happen and those involved will be laughing all the way to their banks.