NGOs in Kyrgyzstan have raised serious concerns about plans for an urban waste incinerator to be built by Italian company ITI. The World Bank Group’s private sector guarantee arm, the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) is lining up to back the project. Organisations in Kyrgyzstan complain that the company has not been willing to discuss concerns about health, pricing and alternatives with them. Some of the figures produced by the company appear to have been generated solely in order to demonstrate procedural compliance with World Bank guidelines.
Dr Irina Matveenko, of the Global and Local Information Partnership, commented “we learned that we were to be inflicted with obsolete technology, violation of our procedural environmental rights, and an insurmountable debt”. She argues that there are other, better, solutions to her country’s waste problems.
