Vietnam punishes officials over Formosa incident

Formosa Advanced Technologies

21/04/2017 17:56

By My Pham 
    HANOI, April 21 (Reuters) - Vietnam's ruling Communist Party 
Secretariat said on Friday it was punishing four high-ranking 
government officials over the so-called Formosa incident, the 
government said in a statement on Facebook.  
    The Secretariat has rebuked Nguyen Minh Quang, the former 
environmental minister of Ha Tinh province, and dismissed his 
two deputies and the former party chief secretary of the 
province, Vo Kim Cu. The statement did not say when the 
punishment would take effect. 
     The Formosa incident occurred a year ago at a steel mill 
being developed by Taiwan's Formosa Plastics Corp. An accidental 
release of chemicals, including cyanide, phenols and iron 
hydroxide, eventually polluted more than 200 km (125 miles) of 
the Vietnamese coast.    
    More than 50 violations at Formosa's steel mill, including 
the unauthorized use of a dirtier production process, led to the 
disaster. It sparked several public protests, with coordinated 
rallies in major cities and an outpouring of anger on social 
media  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL4N1D82DZ. 
    The officials were "irresponsible and loosened their 
management and supervision on environment safety, leading to 
serious damage to the environment and local people," the 
statement said. 
    Those punished were among 11 government, provincial and 
industry officials who were named in February, 11 months after 
the disaster. Formosa agreed last June to pay $500 million in 
compensation  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL4N1G73U1 urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL4N19M3SB. 
    The environment ministry has said it will probably take a 
decade for the affected region to completely recover from the 
accident  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL4N1EI24D. 
 
 (Reporting by My Pham, editing by Larry King) 
 ((my.pham@thomsonreuters.com; +844 3825 9623; Reuters 
Messaging: my.pham.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net)) 
 
Keywords: VIETNAM FORMOSA/