Lanka industrialized nations' electronic dump

Chamikara Weerasinghe

The delay in devicing a plan to manage hazardous waste by policy makers is leading the country to become an electronic dump of industrialized nations, Sri Lanka Customs Bio Diversity Unit officials told the Daily News.

The matter was also raised internationally by the Sri Lanka Customs while participating at the 4th Multilateral Environmental Agreement Regional Enforcement Network (MEA-REN) Workshop in Beijing, China recently.Hazardous waste is a rapidly increasing crisis in Sri Lanka, they said representing Sri Lanka's country report for the workshop.

Massive importation of used automobile parts, computers and their parts, mobile phones and many other electronic wastes has become a grave problem to Sri Lankan policy makers, the report said.

Loss of foreign exchange and usage of low quality goods and excessive power consumption has become a menace in Sri Lanka.

Being a third world country, Sri Lanka has become a dumping ground for electronic waste and many health hazards have originated like kidney disease, they pointed out.

Pollution caused by Cadmium in several substandard fertilizer products has given rise to an unknown kidney disease in the North Central Province, they said.

Upon being inquired by the Daily News, sources at Sri Lanka Customs said they were unable to control the imports of electronic waste, such as used computers, cell phones, music devices, and their accessories as they arrive with Import Control Licences issued by authorities.

"Had the policy makers made laws to control them, we could have prevented most of these items from being dumped to the country," they said.

The items get landed with the approval of the Central Environment Authority (CEA), they said.

CEA Chairman Charitha Herath said they do not have a mandate to approve such imports. "We give only the concurrence," he said. As pointed out by the Customs, neither e-waste nor chemical fertilizer could be imported without the CEA's nod.

It has been reliably learned that CEA has not conducted any survey on electronic waste since 2003, which also was a study rather than a survey, despite Sri Lanka being a signatory to a number of international conventions, such as Montreal Protocol on substances that deplete Ozone layer, Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movements on Hazardous Wastes, Cartegena Protocol on Biosafety, Rotterdam on Hazardous Chemicals, Stockholm on Persistent Organic Pollutants and Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).

The conventions requires compliance from their signatories to control electronic and chemical pollution by way of introducing management mechanisms to prevent import and export of used electronic items which they term as hazardous or toxic.

They include used computer monitors, batteries, refrigerators and various telecommunication devices.

According to CEA Hazardous Waste Management Acting Director Sarojini Jayasekera, it was not only through legal means that used cell phones and computers arrive in the country, but also by illegal means. She said it is necessary that every player come together to address the issue of managing electronic waste.

When it comes to pesticides and fertilizer there are authorities that deal with their imports such as the Fertilizer Secretariat, she said.

CEA has collected 15,000 used mobile phone chargers and batteries in an e-waste collection program carried out by them recently.

As pointed out by the Customs, the policy makers should make it law to prevent e-waste from being dumped into the country.

China, India, Taiwan, Korea, US and Japan are said to be the the major exporters of used electronic products to the island. They export these products despite laws banning the export of e-waste in their countries as marketing e-waste to Asian countries has become a lucrative trade for them, CEA sources said.