Baku protests US group’s report

Baku has come out with protest against the report released by US-based environmental charity Blacksmith Institute in September.

The World's Worst Polluted Places 2007 report suggested that Azerbaijan’s industrial town Sumgayit was one of the world's 10 most polluted regions.

The Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources said in a letter to the Blacksmith Institute that the data provided in the report had been taken from the articles published in the 1990s, Minister Huseyn Baghirov said.

Baghirov said that the working method and activity of the US Institute had been disclosed as a result of the efforts of Azerbaijan’s international partners. By disseminating such information, the Institute collected endowments and sought benefit, he said.

“Criticism must be constructive. We don’t say that Sumgayit is the clearest town of the world. But it is wrong to reduce the ecological cleanness of Sumgayit to zero and make it similar to the towns with completely polluted environment where no human beings live,” the minister said.

Baghirov said that chemical enterprises causing damage to environment in Sumgayit had been destructed long ago and considerable work had been done to maintain the town clean.

In the report, Sumgayit was cited alongside such hotspots as Ukraine’s town of Chernobyl, which was hit by a horrendous industrial accident in 1986, as well as Russia’s towns of Dzerzinsk and Norilsk.

The list also included La Oroya, Peru, Kabwe, Zambia as well as China’s Linfen (the heart of China's coal industry) and Tianjin, and India’s Sukinda and Vapi.

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