Residents of a village in Sagaing Region say emissions from a sulphuric acid factory have forced children to drop out of a nearby school and are to blame for a string of respiratory, skin and eye problems, according to Amnesty International.
The international nonprofit is calling for the urgent location of the Moe Gyo Sulphuric Acid Factory, in Kankone village.
The factory, owned by the military’s Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited, supplies sulphuric acid to copper mines including the controversial giant Letpadaung mine, a joint venture between UMEHL and China’s Wanbao mining.
“UMEHL shouldn’t ignore the concerns of the local authorities and must listen to the very serious complaints of the affected population. The central government now needs to stop the operations of this factory and move it to a safe location,” said Mark Dummett, Amnesty International Business and Human Rights researcher, said in a statement.
The issue was previously the subject of an investigatory committee led by Aung San Suu Kyi in 2013, which discovered that UMEHL had opened the factory without permission, although this was later obtained.
Last month, newly elected municipal authorities declined to renew its annual license before a study of environmental and health impacts could be completed, according to Amnesty.
Residents told the NGO that work stopped for over a month but recently resumed.
Following its opening, on June 15, they say the area nearby became so polluted that students stopped going to their local school, near the factory.
“Every time we smell the acid it is really bad,” a resident told Amnesty in 2014. “People cannot stay in the village at those times. Our eyes tear up and we cough.”
Contact information for UMEHL was not immediately available.
