Tunisia-SANA
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Immigration and Tunisians Abroad Othman Jarandi announced that Tunisia and Italy have reached an agreement to return illegally imported waste in the coming days.
Tunisia Africa News Agency reported that the two sides agreed to retrieve about 212 Italian waste containers imported to Tunisia that had been in the port of Sousse for more than a year, noting that a joint communication would be issued between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Environment and the Italian party in charge of the waste file in the coming hours.
It is noteworthy that since May 2020, an Italian company has imported 282 containers of household waste to Tunisia through a Tunisian company without any respect for the requirements of international conventions that prohibit the import of any hazardous waste to Africa and impose specifications for the control of the cross-border movement of waste and its proper disposal.
And 44 Tunisian, Italian and European environmental groups had previously called on the Italian government and the European Commissioner for Environment and Fishing to stop delaying and order the immediate return of the Italian municipal waste illegally exported to Tunisia.