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R/£ Outrage over plan to open Bhopal site
November 11, 2009 Edition 3
BHOPAL, India: Survivors of the world's worst industrial disaster in India's Bhopal city are outraged by plans to throw open the site to visitors 25 years after the tragedy that killed thousands.
Announced this week by state authorities, the sealed pesticide plant that leaked deadly methyl isocyanate gas on December 3, 1984 is to be opened to the public for a week next month to coincide with the 25th anniversary.
Some 3 500 people died immediately when a storage tank of the plant run by US group Union Carbide - bought by Dow Chemicals in 1999 - spewed the poison gas over the populated slums of Bhopal in central India.
The idea to open the site to the public is to dispel fears about the safety of the blackened factory which still looms over the city's slums, but locals and survivors are opposed to the plan. - Sapa-AFP
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