Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) has be­gun su­per­vis­ing the clean-up of haz­ardous med­ical waste that had been dumped and buried in a res­i­den­tial area in Freeport.It be­longs to Quan­tum Dis­pos­al and Re­cy­cling Ser­vices Ltd, a com­pa­ny owned by Kelvin Ram­nath Jr, son of late EMA chair­man Kelvin Ram­nath, who died last Ju­ly.

Around 8 am yes­ter­day com­pa­ny of­fi­cials, as well as the EMA's lead in­ves­ti­ga­tor Steve Lal­be­har­ry, vis­it­ed the dump site at Val­ley Trace, Main­got Road, Cal­cut­ta No 2, Freeport, to over­see the clean-up.The waste is ex­pect­ed to be sent to a qual­i­fied dis­pos­al com­pa­ny for in­cin­er­a­tion.Waste which was buried at the site sev­er­al months ago was not dug up.Res­i­dent Taslim Mo­hammed said a team from the Min­istry of Health al­so vis­it­ed the site. He said res­i­dents were still con­cerned about waste seep­ing in­to near­by wa­ter­cours­es.

Mean­while, En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Gan­ga Singh said he was yet to re­ceive a re­port from the EMA.In a text mes­sage Singh said he was en­gaged in a Cab­i­net meet­ing and had not yet re­ceived it. He said he had been with­hold­ing com­ment on the mat­ter un­til he got the file.EMA chair­man Dr Joth Singh could not be reached yes­ter­day as calls to his cell­phone went unan­swered.

Ram­nath Jr did not re­spond to mes­sages and op­er­a­tions man­ag­er John Thom­son de­clined com­ment.Both men re­port­ed the mat­ter to the EMA on Tues­day. Ini­tial­ly they both de­nied med­ical waste was be­ing dumped, say­ing the site was mere­ly a stor­age fa­cil­i­ty.How­ev­er, when a news team from the T&T Guardian vis­it­ed the site on Mon­day, mounds of ex­pired phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, nee­dles, sy­ringes, dress­ings and oth­er items were strewn around the site.

Res­i­dents said the il­le­gal dump­ing be­gan more than a year ago while Kelvin Ram­nath Snr was alive.