Somalia’s new environment minister asked the United Nations on Wednesday to investigate possible hazardous waste that was washed ashore by last year’s tsunami. The waste may be causing illnesses among local people.
Mohamed Osman Maye, a minister in Somalia’s new government based in neighbouring Kenya, said strange objects washed ashore all along his country’s coastline, the longest in Africa, when the tsunami struck on December 26 last year.
He said new reports of illnesses and suspected hazardous waste are still reaching his ministry, which has no offices in Somalia.
The new government was formed last year in Kenya, but so far insecurity in the Horn of Africa country has kept it from returning home.
Somalia has been without a functional central government since 1991, when clan-based warlords overthrew the government and then turned on each other. Since then, the country has been divided by fiefdoms and the new transitional government formed in Kenya aims to unite them.
There have been anecdotal reports of foreign ships dumping hazardous waste along Somalia’s coast for more than a decade, but in the absence of a government, conducting thorough investigations has been impossible.
Maye said he has no evidence to back up unconfirmed reports that radioactive waste may have come ashore when the tsunami hit Somalia. But he called on the UN Environment Programme (Unep), also based in Nairobi, for assistance since hundreds of people are reporting unusual illnesses.
”Unep should assist my ministry to send a team of environmental experts jointly composed by Somalis and Unep staff … to identify the reality on the ground in order to define the environment situation, the types of the dumped hazardous debris and their origins,” Maye said.
He said he has no date for when such a team might travel to Somalia.
He also complained to journalists on Wednesday about deforestation caused by the charcoal industry, which supplies Gulf states. He said trees are being harvested without any plan to replace them and it is causing permanent harm to Somalia’s environment.
Foreign fishing vessels have also caused irreparable harm by overfishing in Somali territorial waters, and international intervention is needed to stop them, Maye said. — Sapa-AP