Around 14 tons of vinyl chloride deposited in the former OHIS chemical industrial complex in Skopje, North Macedonia, still await the experts from the French company Kurium to arrive, repackage it in new safe barrels and transport it for proper disposal. The Ekocentar 97 company, which was selected to clean the 11 types of chemicals which are still deposited in OHIS, as part of the “Removal, Dislocation, Disposal or Neutralization of Chemical Maters” project, said that this is a dangerous and highly flammable chemical that has to be handled with care.
The company’s representatives stated it has no choice but to wait for the COVID-19 crisis to end and to wait for French company’s experts to arrive so that the transportation of toxic materials continues. The repackaging of vinyl chloride into special pressurized barrels was planned to start at the start of March and the transportation to the incinerator in Germany was supposed to be finished towards the middle of the same month. The closure of borders due to the coronavirus spread postponed all activities, including the visit of the French and Italian engineers that were supposed to arrive at OHIS plant and give their final approval for the use of the equipment and the safe transportation of the dangerous chemical.
