The Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, represented by the Chemicals and Hazardous Waste Department, on Wednesday organised the first awareness forum on the handling of hazardous materials. Representatives of more than 45 customs clearance companies attended the forum.
The forum aimed to raise awareness of ways to deal with hazardous materials, educate about legislation, and work to open channels of direct communication with companies working in this field, in addition to identifying the needs of stakeholders and their views on work mechanisms and procedures for dealing with chemicals, which contributes to developing the Ministry's system.
The forum included holding two workshops to explain everything related to the import of hazardous materials and ways to deal with them. The first workshop included a presentation, dealing with environmental legislation related to hazardous materials, and means and methods for obtaining licenses for dealing with and trading these materials, as well as the Ministrys classifications of hazardous materials. The second workshop touched on the procedures and stages of releasing hazardous materials at all state ports, common mistakes in this context, and topics related to the import and circulation of hazardous materials.
In this context, Director of the Chemicals and Hazardous Waste at the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Dr. Mohammed Ayed Al Shammari said that the forum is organized out of the Ministry's keenness to educate companies working in the field of importing chemicals on the best ways to deal with these materials, starting from the arrival of shipments, through obtaining customs release.
He explained that the forum shed light on environmental laws and legislation related to the import and circulation of these materials, indicating that the forum is in the interest of preserving the environment and public health, by educating all stakeholders on the correct ways to deal with hazardous materials.
The forum provided company representatives with detailed explanations of all the international agreements and treaties signed by the State of Qatar in this regard, which are the treaties that govern the methods of dealing with these substances, such as the Vienna Convention on the Protection of the Ozone Layer, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone, the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, the International (Basel) Convention for the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, and the Minamata Convention for the Protection of Human Health and the Environment from Mercury Emissions.
The forum also gave a detailed explanation of ways to identify hazardous materials, by carefully reading the safety data sheet on the packages, which includes: identification and warning labels, the procedures and stages for releasing hazardous materials at the ports, and the duties of the customs broker, in terms of preparing documents and using personal protective equipment before inspection.
