About 17 tons of hazardous medical waste will have to be cleared from sites in Welkom, in the Free State, where it was illegally dumped - almost double the amount initially estimated.

Yesterday Environmental Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica said clean-up operations had been temporarily halted because of the enormousness of the task. Some of the waste - which included used syringes and bloodied bandages - lay buried 2m deep.

Sonjica said yesterday in a written reply to a parliamentary question from DA MP Gareth Morgan that an investigation by a hydrogeologist, a specialist in groundwater movement, indicated that the amount of waste - about 17 000 tons - was much greater than initially thought.

Article Continues: IOL

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