BAGHALCHUR, 17 May (IRIN) - Heaps of yellowish, sandy material and pale sludge can be seen around the village of Baghalchur, located in the barren hills around the city of Dera Ghazi Khan, around 300 km south of the capital Islamabad, in the southern Pakistani province of Punjab. At first sight, the material seems innocuous, blending in with the sand and scrub all around. However, local people believe the material contains radioactive nuclear waste, brought in by the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) and dumped in the area by staff wearing full protective gear. The PAEC has vehemently denied this. It maintains that any nuclear material in the region was stored only in underground tunnels and caves, posing no danger to the environment. A former chairman of the PAEC, Pervez Butt, has been quoted as telling the national media that the nuclear waste storage was being "carried out according to international standards".
However, local residents in Baghalchur, and the many tiny hamlets scattered around it, comprising some 50,000 people in total, remain unconvinced. In March this year, the Pakistan Supreme Court heard a petition brought by four residents of Baghalchur in a local court. In the petition, the residents of the area said 40 animals had mysteriously died the previous year. They blame these deaths, and abnormalities seen in the feet of some livestock born recently, as evidence of nuclear poisoning. The petitioners have also stated in their application that 'yellow cake', a raw form of mined uranium, had been left in the open and was being washed into water channels used by both humans and cattle. The three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, gave the PAEC 15 days to reply while ordering that the details of the response be kept secret until the court orders differently. It has yet to fix a new date for resumption of the hearing.
The court's eventual ruling, in a case that is being seen as a landmark in popular environmental rights, is being eagerly awaited by the petitioners and the other villagers of one of the least developed areas of the country. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has ranked the region as one of the most backward in the country. Between 1978 and 2000, the area around Baghalchur was extensively mined for uranium, used in Pakistan's nuclear programme. The tunnels from which the material was extracted remain in place. The mining was wound up by the PAEC at the end of 1999, as "reserves had been extracted". However, local residents, including Farid Leghari, told IRIN that new mining in the area began a few years ago, "when trucks began arriving to dump dangerous waste here". They also claim that "health issues" have increased in the area since the dumping began.
In 2005, after getting no satisfactory response from tribal elders or local authorities, four residents moved the Dera Ghazi Khan sessions court seeking an order to stop the PAEC from dumping waste in a populated area. "As many as 400 drums of atomic waste and other material were lying in the open," said Khan Nazir Ahmed, a member of the union council of Mubarki - one of the areas closest to the mines and waste dumping site. Such claims will remain unverified until a comprehensive survey of the area is carried out. One of the country's leading nuclear physicists, Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, a professor at the prestigious Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, and a committed peace activist, has emphasised that it is vital to carry out a radiochemical analysis of the Baghalchur area. The physicist also recommends medical testing of residents in the area, to determine if there are any effects from the dumping. He has also suggested an "independent enquiry commission" be set up to look into nuclear waste disposal in the area. Pakistan tested nuclear weapons at Chaghai, a site in Balochistan province, in 1998. Many other aspects of the country's controversial nuclear technology programme have remained shrouded in secrecy. So far, the issue of nuclear waste disposal has attracted little public attention in Pakistan. But the court ruling in the current case, pitching the residents of a remote village against the powerful PAEC, looks set to propel the issue to national prominence.
