BBC Panorama's episode "Track My Trash" has been given the dubious credit for a role in sentencing
Joe "Hurricane" Benson, Mark Daniels, and Ezenwa Ogbonnaya for alleged "ewaste" dumping in Africa. Rowe seems pleased enough when we exchanged tweets.
Another BBC reporter, David Reid, went back and gave some "fresh" reporting in 2014. I'm being very, very sarcastic. Reid flew into Accra airport, got himself a hotel room, and a 9 minute taxi ride later surrounded himself, cough coughing, with young men hitting metal with hammers and burning auto wire. About 80 scrappers work at Agbogbloshie, mostly in car recycling, but Reid heads to the tire fires where 25 or so young men stand about burning about 200 kg per day of wire.
"Making a Living from Toxic Electronic Waste in Ghana"
Gotta love that title... journalists and photo journalists certainly are
making a living off of the
witch hunts of Agbogbloshie.
Reid stands at the same bank I stood at, where no cars or trucks have access - only wheelbarrows and pushcarts. And then he goes to Tema Port an hours drive away and films Africa's Tech Sector workers, Africa's "Big Bang Theory" importers unloading a container (like the ones shipped by Daniels, Benson, Ogbayanna, etc.)... the goods being unloaded are clearly a decade newer than the stuff hammered in Agbogbloshie, but Reid can't see that. He just sees black people. He's not making the distinction between the African valedictorian Tech Sector Big Bang Theory superheroes and the toxic wire burning guys at Agbogbloshie.
He asks how much the technicians think will work, and the tech shrugs and says "99 percent". Reid scoffs. It's like he's talking to one of the illiterate drop outs at Agbogbloshie. He snickers and asks "how big is the one percent?"
Because that's the story he came to tell, that the guys in Agbogbloshie are burning England's e-waste. And he's standing right with an imported load which was paid for at several times the value of scrap, plus transport and customs fees and transport. He is looking at a truck that is not driving to Agbogbloshie and could not drive inside if it did. And he's mocking the black guy.
The narrative of Halloween language and images of scary black people is something BBC is obsessed with, despite the HOUSE OF COMMONS openly admitting that only 19% of containers have ANY illegal material in them at all, and that the UK's priortity is to keep "strategic" metals for Big Shred.
Oh, did you miss that? Read more... lots of research has turned up during writing of our report on Agbogbloshie.
