By TCN Special Correspondent,
New Delhi: “We are fed up with empty promises, it’s more than enough now and we want action,” says furious Safreen Khan, one of the children exposed to toxic contamination from Union Carbide’s untreated chemical waste. She is sitting on a Dharna jointly organized by four groups of the survivors at Jantar Mantar since 15thApril to remind the Prime Minister his own promises made in 2008.
Safreen is just 17 years old and heads Children Against Dow-Carbide, a group of children involved in mobilisation and awareness among children about Dow-Carbide and issues related to Bhopal Gas tragedy. “We are not going to budge from here until action starts,” adds determined Safreen. Just before coming to Delhi for this dharna, she has finished her tenth board examination. “The State government’s failure in providing clean water to the people living next to the factory even four years after the allocation of central funds is most illustrative of its apathetic towards the survivors and its incompetence in completing projects,” accuses Safreen. According to her more than 20,000 are still forced to drink poisoned water. Rachna Dhingra of Bhopal Group for Information & Action and Syed Irfan of Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha echo Safreen’s.
It can be noted that on 29 May, 2008 the then Minister of State for PMO, Prithviraj Chavan, publicly declared the Government’s “in-principle” agreement to set up an Empowered Commission on Bhopal. This was followed by a decision of the Group of Ministers on Bhopal, headed at that time by Arjun Singh, recommending the setting up of the Empowered Commission. Earlier on April 16, 2006, the Prime Minister ended a 21day strike, including a 6-day hunger strike by the Bhopalis, by promising to meet the demands of the survivors. The survivors had demanded an empowered Commission to implement social, medical and economic rehabilitation schemes for survivors and their children, in addition to cleaning up Union Carbide’s toxic wastes, providing clean water to water-affected communities, and taking legal action against Dow Chemical and Union Carbide.
At the midnight of 2nd-3rd December of 1984, 40 tones of the deadly Methyle ISO Cynidine (MIC) gas leaked out of the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL)’s factory. This highly poisonous gas, black green in colour, according to those who witnessed it, swept an area covering almost the whole of old Bhopal in a matter of hours killing 8,000 people and leaving half a million permanently in sub human, in fact animal condition. Since then, an additional 15,000 people had to die untimely because of its exposition of poisonous gas to them.