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OBSOLETE PESTICIDES LEAVE MOZAMBICANS WITH $600,000 PROBLEM

by Charles Mangwiro, African Eye News Service (South Africa)

MAPUTO, Mozambique, 22 July 1999 -- Plans to re-export hundreds of tonnes of obsolete but highly toxic pesticides from Mozambique will cost the impoverished country at least US$600 000, African Eye News Service reports.

The pesticides, currently stored in the country's southern city of Matola, were originally meant to be incinerated in a local cement factory. The plan, funded by Denmark, was spiked following outrage by local environmentalists and a damning environmental impact assessment by Mozambican firm Impacto.

Mozambique's environmental ministry secretary general, Francisco Mabjaia, said on Thursday that the government was now considering re-exporting the pesticides for destruction at specialized facilities.

The plan could, he said, cost the country up to US$600 000. The pesticides were originally imported into Mozambique for destruction after an EIA by a Danish company found that there would be no serious negative affects if they were incinerated.

The EIA only warned that no pesticides containing heavy metals such as mercury should be destroyed in the cement factory's furnaces.

Mabjaia said the government had not yet decided exactly how to destroy the pesticides and had not yet committed itself to re-exporting them.

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