The Vietnamese unit of Taiwan’s Formosa Plastics Group in the north-central province of Ha Tinh has passed the buck on the illegal coking waste burial to the environment company it had contracted to treat them.

The Formosa Ha Tinh issued a press release yesterday to official comment on the underground disposal of 100 metric tons of wastes reportedly resulted from the coking furnace of its steel mill.

The wastes were last week found to have been buried inside a farm run by the urban environment company of the local town of Ky Anh -- the same company Formosa had contracted to treat what it said was household wastes from its Ha Tinh operations.

In the statement, Formosa Ha Tinh said the Ky Anh company is supposed to dump the wastes at a proper place, instead of burying them at the farm.

“Once the wastes are transported outside the Formosa facility, it is the Ky Anh firm to take full responsibility of them,” the Taiwanese firm said.

Formosa reiterated that its wastes had been certified by the provincial environment department as “normal industrial wastes.”

So the environment company should be accountable for the wrong-place disposal of the normal wastes, according to the Taiwanese company.

Le Quang Hoa, director of the Ky Anh urban environment company, fired back, saying they are waiting for test results to see if the wastes are hazardous.

“Formosa should be responsible if the wastes are verified as toxic,” Hoa told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Friday.

However, according to the Ha Tinh environment department, it is wrong of Formosa to contract the Ky Anh firm to treat its wastes, as the job is not among the designated functions of the company.

The environment department had notified Formosa that the Ky Anh firm is incapable of treating industrial wastes, but the Taiwanese company still proceeded with the contract signing.

On Tuesday, Formosa admitted its wrongdoing in contracting the Ky Anh firm, said environment department director Vo Ta Dinh.

In the meantime, Nguyen Thuong Hien, head of the wastes management agency under the environment ministry, Formosa, as the source of the wastes, should also share the responsibility with the Ky Anh firm in this incident.

Fresh waste scandal

The Vietnamese unit of Formosa has been hit by a series of environmental scandals, including the illegal burial of 100 metric tons of coking wastes, and the dirty water discharge that led to a mass fish kill in central Vietnam, and the wrongful disposal of waste at a landfill.

On Friday, it has also been reported that the company had also contracted a local environment firm to dump 145 metric tons of hazardous waste in the northern province of Phu Tho.

Formosa has had the Phu Ha Co. to transport the wastes from Ha Tinh to Phu Tho for disposal since August 2015, according to the Vietnam News Agency.

Hoang Chi Thuc, direct of Phu Ha Co., said late Friday that the wastes are in fact 145 tons of iron barrels Formosa used to store its chemicals.

“So the hazardous wastes in this case are not really wastes, but used containers of the chemicals,” he said.

As per the Vietnamese law, even those containers are classified as hazardous wastes, which Thuc said has led to the misunderstanding that his company had dumped toxic wastes for Formosa.

Relevant agencies are still investigating this fresh environmental scandal of Formosa.

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