Malema linked to dirty firm
2010-07-18 13:00
Mariechen Waldner and Piet Rampedi
ANC youth leader Julius Malema is a business partner of Dr Christos
Eleftheriades, the man at the helm of Thermopower Technologies.
Thermopower will face criminal prosecution in the Kempton Park
Magistrates’ Court on Thursday for a range of environmental
transgressions.
The carcinogenic content of its emissions at its Gauteng waste
treatment facilities are just below nuclear level, according to consultants to
the surrounding community.
Eleftheriades’s Medicare Process Technologies and Malema’s Blue
Nightingale Trading 61 are partners in Tshumisano Waste Management, a consortium
that won a lucrative contract for the removal and treatment of medical waste
from Limpopo’s hospitals and clinics.
Blue Nightingale, of which Malema is the sole director, owns a 3%
stake in Tshumisano.
Malema yesterday denied that he was Eleftheriades’s business
partner, saying he did not even know who Thermopower or Medicare Process
Technologies were.
The ANC Youth League boss said he never dealt with the members of
the Tshumisano consortium because they won Limpopo’s multimillion waste removal
tender in 2005 and he only bought his Blue Nightingale company a year later.
“I was never in that thing. I was never part of them,” he insisted
yesterday.
A range of recently published scientific reports hold the company
responsible for highly toxic dioxin emissions and warn that Pretoria’s water
supply is vulnerable because of lax standards at Thermopower.
Thermopower last week told City Press that a range of air quality
studies and emission reports were regularly submitted to the relevant
authorities and that these did not indicate that the community was adversely
affected.
Eleftheriades said that the Tshumisano consortium paid Blue
Nightingale a monthly dividend of R136 000.
He said he never directly dealt with Malema or the representatives
of the company because the consortium had tasked one of its directors, Dr
Phetole Sekete, to liaise with Blue Nightingale.
“All I know is that it is made up of youths. Dr Sekete is the guy
who said we needed local content and youths and I agreed,” he said. “I’ve been
asked about Malema but I’ve never dealt with him directly.”
Sekete could not be reached for comment last night.
Malema said if Thermopower were taken to court for polluting the
environment, so be it.
“They must take them to court if that is what they are doing. I do
not know those people. I do not even know who Thermopower is. When you first
asked me, I thought you were talking about energy things.”
He added that even Public Protector Thuli Madonsela, “who goes
around saying ‘give me any file that has Julius’s name in it’ will never find a
thing”.
The community of Olifantsfontein, which has been battling
Eleftheriades and the odorous, toxic emissions from Thermopower for years, does
not know Malema is in business with the man they hold responsible for their
health problems.
Ironically, they approached the ANC youth leader to help them in
their battle against Eleftheriades.
“He has not replied yet,” said community leader Kgomotso
Modiselle.
The community is up in arms about the fumes that cause burning
eyes, sore throats and respiratory problems.
Reports show that the affected in a 1.5km radius include: 200
agricultural workers, 1 000 scholars, 1 000 households of between three and
five people, and 1 000 industrial workers.
Eleftheriades has applied for permission to extend his plant, a
move opposed by the community.
He also has plans to truck in hazardous waste from KwaZulu-Natal
after the decommissioning of the Guernica waste treatment plant in Durban.
The community want to stop this.
Residents are also wary of what they regard as an overfriendly
relationship between Thermopower and the local ANC.
City Press is in possession of a grovelling letter written to
Thermopower by ANC Andrew Mapheto Zone secretary Tshilidzi Munayi.
It reads: “With greatest humility, the Zonal Executive Committee of
the African National Congress appreciate with much gratitude indeed for your
company to avail its highest management to engage arising out of health-related
issues raised by our community members from public meetings beings held
Saturday, 7 of February 2009, Clayville Ext 27.”