Malfunctioning concrete factory makes locals' lives a misery

On days when the south wind blows, the clothes that villagers in Lower Chaqishi, in the northern Iraqi governorate of Sulaymaniyah, hang up to dry come in whiter than white. It sounds like an advert for washing powder. But the powder here is cement, and it coats coloured and white washing alike. Lower Chaqishi is barely a kilometre from Tasluja, Iraqi Kurdistan's largest cement factory, capable of producing up to 2 million mt when it was opened in 1985. "It wasn't a problem at first," villager Hama Said Rauf told IRIN. "The factory provided work, and both chimneys together produced less smoke than the small one you can see over there." He pointed to a little flue emitting barely visible fumes. Next to it, one of the two tall chimneys belched out great gusts of yellowish-white smoke. "Engineers tell us they're losing 30 percent of total production out of that," he sighed. Like the other 50 families in Lower Chaqishi, Rauf was no longer here when problems started at the factory. The former regime razed his village in 1987. A year later, one of the chimneys was closed down, and the other one stopped working properly. "The filter and electrostatic dust precipitator systems failed," the factory's former director, Osman Qadir, told IRIN in Sulaymaniyah. After 1991, with Iraq under international sanctions, it proved impossible to find spare parts. It's an excuse people living close to the factory find difficult to accept. The continuing malfunction, they say, is affecting every aspect of their lives. "You wash your car, and 10 minutes later it is dirty again," complained Sarchel Ali, a local government official in Tasluja town. "Every year, my cows get thinner, and the milk they produce gets less and less," added Mohamed Kaki Aziz, a farmer in Lower Chaqishi. "Our yoghurt tastes burnt, just like the grass the poor beasts have to eat." It's not just the animals that are affected. In both Lower Chaqishi and Tasluja there is clear evidence that human beings are suffering too. A medical assistant at Tasluja clinic, Said Raza, has suffered acute asthmatic attacks for more than two years now. Physical work is beyond him, and in winter his coughs have an unnerving tendency to develop into full-blown bronchitis. "The last time I went to Sulaymaniyah to get ventolin [medicine] for the asthma, doctors told me the problems would disappear if I left Tasluja," he said. "How can I do that, though? I've nowhere else to go." Staff at the clinic where Raza works say that cases like his come through the door almost daily. Upper and lower respiratory tract diseases, allergies, influenza and sinusitis are all more common than elsewhere, they add. So are eye infections. "It would not be so bad if we were dealing with acute cases," explained local doctor Dana Nasreddin. "But what we are seeing here are chronically affected patients. Levels of chronic bronchitis among the elderly are extremely high." Back in Sulaymaniyah, where he is now adviser to the Ministry of Industry, Osman Qadir insisted that steps were being taken to resolve the problem. Currently a state-owned factory churning out 250,000 mt of heavily subsidised concrete a year, Tasluja is shortly to be semi-privatised, he said. And the privatisation contract makes it clear that pollution levels must drop below the international standards of 150mm per cubic metre. "We paid US $50,000 to get a group of German engineers to look into the problem this summer," said Qadir. "Work renovating and upgrading filter systems will start in January." Some locals are satisfied that, finally, after years of petitioning, the government is taking an interest in their plight. But they are in the minority. "I seem to remember hearing promises like that a couple of years back," said Hama Said Rauf, in Lower Chaqishi. "Afterwards, I think they must have decided to do nothing, so they could make a few more TV programmes about how bad living conditions were here." Mohamed Talib Ahmed, administrator of Tasluja clinic, is no less cynical. "Do you see over there," he said, pointing to the small asphalt factory on the southern side of town. "Those people have no permit to be there," he maintained.