The National Environment Management Authority – NEMA has halted all activities at Nyanza Textile Industries Limited (NYTIL) that generate waste water.

The suspension follows an inspection of the facility in Jinja, after public outcry on social media over alleged contamination of River Nile by the facility.

“A team of environmental inspectors was dispatched to the site on January 5, 2022 and discovered that there was a blockage at the facility’s Effluent Treatment Plant that caused industrial waste water to overflow into a storm water drainage channel and subsequently into River Nile. We have picked samples from the river for laboratory analysis to inform the way forward,” NEMA said in a statement released Thursday morning.

“In order to prevent further pollution of the river, all activities at NYTIL that generate industrial waste water have been suspended until an effective Effluent Treatment Plant has been designed and operationalized, to handle all the effluent generated at the facility, to the satisfaction of NEMA,” the statement further reads.

The suspension is in line with the provisions of the National Environment Act No. 5, 2019 and the National Environment (Standards for Discharge of Effluent into Water or Land) Regulations, 2020.

Unregulated discharge of industrial waste water is a public health hazard and has deleterious impacts on the environment including; loss of aquatic biodiversity, contamination of food chains, compromising the quality of usable water especially for downstream users.

The Authority thanked the public for being vigilant and urged citizens to continue reporting environmental breaches and incidents within our communities.