ROME
\nItaly is to take back hundreds of containers of mislabeled household and hospital waste that was sent to Tunisia last year and is being stored at the port of Sousse.
\nAn agreement was reached following a meeting between Vincenzo De Luca, governor of the region of Campania, and Tunisia\u2019s Ambassador to Italy Moez Sinaoui.
\nCampania will be in charge of the transfer of the containers, in a case that has caused public rage in Tunisia.
\nBetween May and July last year, 282 containers holding 7,900 tons of undifferentiated waste were illegally exported from Italy to Tunisia.
\nInvestigations are underway by the Tunisian and Italian judiciaries to ascertain responsibility for the falsification of the documents issued for the cross-border authorizations.
\nLast month, Tunisian Environment Minister Mustapha Laroui was arrested in connection with the scandal.
\nSenior officials at the Environment Ministry, Tunisian customs and the Waste Management Agency were also arrested.
\nTunisia company Soreplast, which imported the containers, said they held scrap plastic that it would recycle.
\nBut the containers were discovered to be holding tons of household and hospital refuse, the import of which is banned by Tunisia, raising speculation that they formed part of an illicit trade in waste products.
\nSinaoui thanked De Luca \u201cfor his collaboration and for the willingness shown in closing the dossier definitively in the shortest possible time, in the spirit of friendship and of cooperation between the respective countries.\u201d
\nDe Luca affirmed his region\u2019s commitment to return the waste, telling Arab News: \u201cThis is perfectly in line with the great relationship between Tunisia and Italy, and Campania in particular.\u201d
\nThe return of the containers was one of the issues discussed on Dec. 28 in Tunis during a meeting between Tunisian President Kais Saied and Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ROME Italy is to take back hundreds of containers of mislabeled household and hospital waste that was sent to Tunisia last year and is being stored at the port of Sousse. An agreement was reached following a meeting between Vincenzo De Luca, governor of the region of Campania, and Tunisia\u2019s Ambassador to Italy Moez Sinaoui. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-238039","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n