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The aluminium company at the centre of a toxic spill in Eastern Europe has provoked an angry response from victims of the disaster – and the Hungarian government – by denying it has done anything wrong.
MAL Hungarian Aluminium, which leaked 700,000 cubic metres of caustic alkaline sludge after a reservoir ruptured at one of its plants in west Hungary, has said the material was ‘non-hazardous’, despite the fact it has killed four and injured over 150, many seriously, as a result of burns. Hungary’s interior minister suggested the company’s representatives ‘take a swim in it and then they’ll see’.
MAL has termed the disaster a ‘natural catastrophe’, and says it could not have done anything to avert it.
The company has also drawn criticism by offering families affected by the leak $500 dollars each. The mayor of one village affected called the $150,000 fund set aside by the company ‘a drop in the ocean in terms of how much money is needed to fix the situation’. The firm has also offered to cover funeral expenses for the four killed by the spill, despite denying culpability.
The pollution has reached the Danube, one of Europe’s main waterways, with the clean-up expected to take at least a year and to cost tens of millions of dollars.
MAL Hungarian Aluminium, which leaked 700,000 cubic metres of caustic alkaline sludge after a reservoir ruptured at one of its plants in west Hungary, has said the material was ‘non-hazardous’, despite the fact it has killed four and injured over 150, many seriously, as a result of burns. Hungary’s interior minister suggested the company’s representatives ‘take a swim in it and then they’ll see’.
MAL has termed the disaster a ‘natural catastrophe’, and says it could not have done anything to avert it.
The company has also drawn criticism by offering families affected by the leak $500 dollars each. The mayor of one village affected called the $150,000 fund set aside by the company ‘a drop in the ocean in terms of how much money is needed to fix the situation’. The firm has also offered to cover funeral expenses for the four killed by the spill, despite denying culpability.
The pollution has reached the Danube, one of Europe’s main waterways, with the clean-up expected to take at least a year and to cost tens of millions of dollars.
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