UCC-A History of Massacre

This topic deserves to be postd in political forum as a goverment of any country is totally responsible for "allowing" such long term sufferings of its people.

After over 20 years of the Bhopal Gas Tragey(India) caused due to leakage from the Union Carbide plant, the issue needs to be revoked time & again to remind how the MNCs in collaboartion with several vested interests play with the lives of innocent- ignorant people.The main victims often being the poeple of developing nations and sometimes...well read for yourself.
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Carbide cripples Bhopal

1) A History of Massacre * Union Carbide (UCC) started out as a carbon company in 1886 and diversified to gases and chemicals during World War I.
** From the Manhattan project of World War II, until it relinquished its contract in 1984, Union Carbide was a contractor to the US federal government?s nuclear weapons production.
* Before Bhopal, Union Carbide Corporation caused the largest industrial disaster in the US. In the construction of the Hawk?s Nest Tunnel in West Virginia in 1934 nearly 2000 company workers, most of them black, died of silicosis - an occupational disease caused by hazardous working conditions.
** At the Cimanggis plant in Indonesia at one point in 1978, 402 employees (more than half the work force of 750), were suffering from kidney diseaes attributable to workplace contamination according to the company?s doctor Dr.Maizar Syafei. She was asked by the company not to tell the workers that there was mercury in their drinking water or else the workers "would become anxious."

2)Union Carbide Corporation owned 50.9% shares in its Indian subsidiary Union Carbide India Ltd. (UCIL). According to estimates made by The Economic Times Research Bureau, by 1984 the dividend remittances by UCIL to its parent company was more than the aggregate investment made by the corporation in Bhopal since its inception in 1969. In addition to the dividends, profits from the Indian subsidiary were funelled to the parent company as ?technical service fee? for use of Union Carbide?s technology, patents, trademarks as well as continuous know how and safety audits.

3)Obsessed With the Bottomline As part of UCC?s economy drive, the management at the Bhopal plant had switched off the refrigeration unit to save about Rs.700 (US $ 50) per day. Had the refrigeration unit been working, a runaway reaction in the MIC tank could have been delayed or even prevented. Experts prescribed fortnightly inspection of valves, pipes, pumps, etc. and replacements every six months in plants dealing with corrosive chemicals such as methyl isocyanate. At Carbide?s Bhopal plant, inspections were rare and replacements often not made for up to 2 years. Also included in the cost cutting measures was the reduction in the workforce in the Bhopal factory - brought down by half from 1980-84. The work crew for the MIC plant was cut by half from 12 to 6 workers, the maintenance crew in the same plant reduced from 6 to 2 workers. In the control room, there was only 1 operator who was expected to monitor 70-odd panels, indicators and controllers on the console. The period of safety training to workers in MIC plant was brought down from 6 months to 15 days.

4)Double Standards At the West Virginia plant all the vital systems had back-ups and were automatically linked to computerised alarms and crises control systems. The Bhopal plant not only lacked all the above but the sole manual alarm was also switched off so as not to ?unduly? alarm people.

5)All over Europe the maximum permissible storage limit for MIC is half a ton. At the Bhopal plant, the US company?s management overrode the wishes of the managers of its Indian subsidiary and kept the storage capacity hazardously high at over 90 tons. On the night of the disaster, 67 tons of MIC were stored in two tanks.

6)The first time the management of the Carb

Some of the useful sites on the Bhopal Union Carbide Incident

http://www.hu.mtu.edu/hu_dept/tc@mtu/papers/bhopal.htm<BR> http://in.rediff.com/news/2004/dec/01bhopal.htm<BR> http://www.tcnj.edu/~rgraham/failures/UCBhopal.html<BR> http://www.bhopal.net/poisonpapers.html<BR> http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_news.asp?id=265038