NOEL IYOMWA writes
A NINE-YEAR-OLD daughter of a Chipata Township resident in Lusaka has contracted an unknown disease as a result of the pollution from a nearby government incinerator built next to his house.
Mr Kennedy Makukula, a landlord of a house next to an incinerator at Chipata Level One Hospital, said his daughter was complaining of severe chest pains because of inhaling gas emissions from the incinerator.
Mr Makukula told the Sun that his nine-year-old daughter Grace had been sick for a week with chest pains, which he suspected were the result of the pollution from the incinerator.
The family settled on the plot long before the incinerator was build few years ago and despite pleading with the government through the Ministry of Health to compensate him so that the family relocated nothing had come out.
Mr Makukula appealed to President Edgar Lungu over the matter because it was now five years since the ministry promised to do something about his complaint.
He said the family was ‘dying slowly’ because of the air pollution from the incinerator, which is only three metres away from the house as well as the storage room where placentas are kept before disposal.
“We are dying slowly with my family due to health hazard and air pollution from the incinerator, which is three metres away from my house as well as the storage room where they keep placentas. Just after the hospital mortuary. The smoke, smell and flies that come from the above mentioned are bad in that, we don’t breathe well.
“Your excellence, our lives are like in prison. I and my family have suffered for justice. Way back the blood from the placentas that was put beside the wall fence waiting to be burned in the incinerator was entering our yard for three years through the crack of the wall fence,” Mr Makukula said.
“To our surprise, they put plaster and painting on the wall fence without considering our environment,” he said.
Mr Makukula said Government had ensured that there would be health for all citizens but his family had been left behind, especially now that his five tenants have abandoned him because of the incinerator issue.
The Ministry of Health spokesperson could not be immediately reached for a comment.
