Two-thirds of Dhi Qar’s waste is dumped in sites that pose a danger to residents

A few weeks ago, Ahmed Mohammed woke up in one of the upper floor rooms of his house in the Industrial Housing area south of Nasiriyah, nearly suffocating.

Ahmed was unable to breathe due to fumes and foul odors emanating from the area. As soon as he peeked his head out the window, he saw columns of smoke obscuring the entire view within the residential neighborhood, which is more than 3 kilometers away from the sanitary landfill complex.

The sanitary landfill belonging to the Nasiriyah municipality is located about twenty kilometers south of the city center, but it is only a short distance from the Industrial Housing neighborhood, which has an estimated population of three thousand people. Its residents often complain of suffocation due to the smoke generated from the landfill by what are called “scavengers.”

The “scavengers” are a group of young men, boys, and women who deliberately burn waste to obtain metals mixed with plastic and sell them to earn their daily living. The value of what they collect daily does not exceed about fifteen thousand dinars in the best cases.

However, Ahmed confirms that this group is the most affected, as they roam inside the waste, which is always mixed with medical waste that poses a danger to human life.

The sanitary landfill in Nasiriyah is one of the polluted sites in the governorate. The governorate’s environment directorate had managed to issue an order to close it due to its negative impact on the health of citizens and nearby neighborhoods. It is one of 14 sanitary landfill sites in Dhi Qar governorate spread across districts and sub-districts.

According to the Central Statistical Organization, nine of these sites do not have official approvals and operate outside environmental controls and determinants, and are considered in violation of the conditions of the Environmental Protection and Improvement Law.

The director of Dhi Qar’s environment, Karim Hani, told the platform that what has been identified and recorded by the technical teams that carry out field inspection work is the random dumping of waste in the landfill site, where medical waste is mixed with household waste at a time when medical waste should be treated in isolation due to its specificity and content of sensitive and harmful chemicals.

Hani adds that three of these sites have been prosecuted in the competent courts and that the directorate is waiting for closure orders to be issued for the remaining sites that have not obtained an environmental license, as “the closure order is within the authority of the Minister of Environment, and the site that does not obtain approval and continues to operate poses a danger to citizen health,” according to him.

The number of municipal institutions concerned with cleaning and waste collection, according to the latest statistics for 2021, is 20 municipal departments that raise 666,625 tons of waste annually, of which ordinary waste left by citizens constitutes 93.5%.

This means that the daily average of waste collected is 1,826 tons, at a rate of 1.4 kilograms of waste per person.

According to official government data, more than 64% of the waste that should be disposed of in remote and isolated sites is dumped in landfill sites that violate environmental controls and determinants and pose a danger to the health situation, in addition to the environmental effects they leave behind and the fires that occur in them.

The Nasiriyah municipality, through its director Ali Abdul Sattar, told the platform that it worked on choosing an alternative location for sanitary landfill, but the new site was presented to investors for the purpose of carrying out waste collection and treatment work from the city. Until this is done, there is no alternative at present to the current site.

Abdul Sattar added that the municipality worked on digging a trench around the site to prevent “scavengers” from entering and burning waste to extract plastic pieces and metals for sale.

Abdul Sattar reveals a step the municipality has in the next stage, which is to secure a specialized vehicle for collecting and treating medical waste to ensure no harm from it after coordination with the doctors’ syndicate in this regard.

The Director-General of the Council for Environmental Protection and Improvement in southern Iraq, Mohsen Aziz, describes the sites that have not obtained environmental clearance as “waste dumps” and cannot be described as landfill sites. He adds that the random burning that occurs in them by groups called scavengers poses a great danger to the respiratory system, as smoke emissions can reach a distance of 4 kilometers.

As for Ahmed and the residents of his residential area, they are still suffering from the smoke of burning waste until now and are launching appeals and calls through social media to find solutions that allow them to breathe air free of odors and toxic gases that have caused them chronic respiratory diseases.

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