Veolia Takes Severe Blow As It Fails To Win 485 Million Pound Contract In West London

Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s press release in the UK:

29 December 2011

Veolia Takes Severe Blow As It Fails To Win 485 Million Pound Contract In West London

Human rights campaigners are celebrating after the West London Waste Authority ('WLWA') excluded French multinational Veolia from a £485 million contract covering 1.4 million inhabitants of  the London boroughs of Brent, Ealing, Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow and Richmond-upon-Thames, for treatment of residual domestic waste. 

The reasons behind the decision by the WLWA to exclude Veolia are commercially confidential but the impact of human rights campaigners should not be under-estimated. 

Over the last six months campaigners lobbied Councillors and Council officials to exclude Veolia from the contract and submitted a letter to the WLWA - signed by nearly 600 local residents - documenting Veolia's direct complicity in grave breaches of international and humanitarian law in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Campaigners pointed out that:

Veolia helped build and is involved in operating a tram-line which links Jerusalem with illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank.

Veolia takes waste from Israel and illegal  Israeli Settlements and dumps this on Palestinian land at the Tovlan landfill.

The letter also gave evidence of Veolia's racist recruitment policies in Israel, as well as the company's operation of buses on Highway 443 which Palestinians are prohibited from using.

Veolia's failure to win the WLWA contract is a heavy blow for the company because it owns a domestic waste depot in the area covered by the WLWA and so should have been ideally placed to meet some of the necessary criteria for the WLWA tender.  

Worse still for Veolia, this blow comes only six months after it failed to win Ealing Council's £300m  new 'Clean and Green' contract even though Veolia already did much of the work under the old contract. When bidding for that contract Veolia had faced determined opposition from Palestinian rights campaigners over its track record in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Campaigners across the world are focussed on Veolia because it is a key target of the global Boycott Divestment and Sanctions ('BDS') campaign for Palestinian rights and which is led by Palestinian civil society organisations.

Sarah Colborne, Director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the UK , commented :

'Complicity in infringing human rights and international law has become an expensive business for Veolia.  Other companies please note: There is a strong, determined and popular international campaign for justice for Palestinians; if you aid Israel's oppression of Palestinians your business will suffer just like Veolia's'

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N E W S L E T T E R of  "Dump Veolia West London Steering Group"

FINAL VICTORY ISSUE

29 December 2011

WE DID IT!!!

WHAT A COUPLE OF WEEKS IT’S BEEN.  Our long campaign to have Veolia excluded from the procurement on the grounds of its grave misconduct in the West Bank and East Jerusalem received an early setback when the company was one of the eight originally invited to tender. 

Our response was to step up the campaign. We met with the Waste Authority and with the help of our own legal expert, Danny Machover, we were able to explain in detail the moral and legal case for excluding Veolia.  Recognising the Authority’s concern about complying with procurement legislation we patiently reminded them that it does not rule out excluding a bidder on grounds of grave misconduct. 

At the same time we took the campaign out into the community, gathering nearly 600 signatures for our joint letter which was sent to the WLWA on 10 November. We can safely say the WLWA had never received anything like this before! The first of a projected series of public meetings was organised in Brent on 22 November. We knew the shortlist of bidders would be decided this week but rather than sit back and wait we prepared plans to broaden and intensify the campaign in the New Year. 

A few days before Christmas, the West London Waste Authority website announced its four shortlisted bidders for the domestic waste disposal contract. We scrutinised the list. We rubbed our eyes. We looked again. VEOLIA’S NAME WAS NOWHERE TO BE SEEN! Emails flew between activists in London and around the world. We checked with the Authority, spoke with its representatives, clarified whether there was an appeal process to which rejected bidders might have recourse. 

Then finally the news was confirmed. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign, whose branches in west London had initiated the Dump Veolia campaign, issued a press release, reproduced below. We are proud to have received congratulations from Omar Barghouti, leading advocate of the Palestinian Civil Society Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. It all goes to show what can be achieved by acting together. Those congratulations belong to everyone who added his or her name to the letter to WLWA or who helped in any other way during all the long months of dedicated campaign work.  The calendar says winter officially began last week, but for supporters of Palestinian human rights in west London it feels like spring.    

This victory is just one of a growing number around the world and will inspire thousands of others campaigning for Palestinian human rights. Veolia’s share prices have been sliding over the past year, not helped by its human rights reputation, and took a distinct dive a day or so ago when news of the company’s failure in west London was picked up by traders – a reminder that our victory in west London also has a direct global impact.

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It’s good to celebrate our success – but the best way to celebrate is to apply ourselves with renewed energy to the campaign for Palestinian human rights in the months to come. 

We must never forget that Veolia and other companies continue to profit from Israel’s continuing occupation of Palestinian land and the oppression of Palestinian men, women and children.  

The struggle continues: 

·        For 2012 we are preparing a new agenda for public and lobbying activities on Palestinian human rights, which is increasingly becoming the great moral issue of our time. 

·        Some of us are active in campaigning against Veolia’s sponsorship of the Wild Life Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington where we hand out leaflets and talk with museum-goers on alternate Saturday mornings. 

·        Further activities against Veolia continue in other parts of London where campaigners are working hard to ensure decisions on lucrative contracts will go the same way as in west London. 

·        Groups of activists also regularly leaflet outside supermarkets urging shoppers to boycott Israeli and illegal settlement goods. 

·        Public meetings are organised in various parts of west London on different aspects of the Palestinian human rights, always with expert speakers. 

Co-ordinating our efforts through the broad-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign (http://www.palestinecampaign.org/), we take our cue from the call issued in 2005 by the overwhelming majority of Palestinian Civil Society for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel until it complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights (http://www.bdsmovement.net/call#.TvXAadSRHII).

Brian Durrans, for Dump Veolia West London Steering Group

Email: nernier@gmail.com  Mobile: 0785 441 9955