ID :
115256
Tue, 04/06/2010 - 12:28
Auther :

The only plant on processing of garbage in Kazakhstan stopped functioning

Almaty, April 06, 2010 (Khabar) - Its employees stopped working as they didn’t get salary for two months. The difficulties of the plant are connected with financing – the enterprise is not repaid and debts increase. The task of such enterprises is to process garbage and unload the polygons with rubbish. The Almaty garbage plant was opened in 2007 and it successfully worked until beginning of crisis. About 1,5 tons of garbage were brought here every day. Packing belt, pipes etc were made of plastic bottles, paper, cardboard and rubber. It was planned to expand the production. Garbage collecting companies pay to the plant only 600 tenge for one ton of wastes and exported products also are not rentable. Yegor Zinger, chairman of plant “Vtorma Ecology” says if they increase tariffs, then garbage collecting companies can take the garbage just to the polygons and volume of brought wastes can reduce. The plant can process about 600 000 tons per year.
Every year about 450 000 tons of wastes are taken to the special polygon in the Almaty region and damps appear in some places and they get inflamed often. Besides, various poisonous substances such as methane, ethylene and phosphide are formed as a result of decay of wastes. All these harmful substances penetrate into the soil and underground water. And specialists say the garbage plant reduces the ecological risk to minimum and ecologists add there mustn’t be polygons without such enterprises.

Mikhail Rogozhin, ecologist of regional Ecological center in Central Asia:
- They must work together and there should be vast management, i.e. wastes management. It means wastes must be collected separately and they must not be combined. Processing of garbage must be developed and those wastes, which can’t be processed, it must be minimum, and these wastes must be buried.

Over 500 workers of the plant stopped working as they didn’t receive salary for two months. The plant management assured them to pay them salary in the nearest future but the issue of plant’s functioning is not solved.

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