Poland’s government is planning to crack down on a "garbage mafia," the country's environment minister said on Tuesday amid reports of a spate of suspicious landfill fires.

“I think we are dealing with a garbage mafia,” Henryk Kowalczyk said, as quoted by Poland's PAP news agency.

He was speaking ahead of a Cabinet meeting during which he was expected to brief ministers on waste disposal irregularities and come up with a plan to deal with landfill fires.

Prosecutors were investigating after a series of garbage dump fires in various locations in Poland in recent days triggered fears of an environmental hazard, according to reports.

Firefighters have been deployed in large numbers to put out landfill fires in the central town of Zgierz and in the village of Wszedzień near the north-central town of Mogilno, in addition to a tyre dump fire in the southern town of Trzebinia, public broadcaster Polish Radio’s IAR news agency reported.

Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki wrote on Twitter on Tuesday: "We must not allow criminals to poison us and our children and to destroy the environment."

Kowalczyk told Polish Radio that garbage dump fires were an "enormous" problem that stemmed from imperfect waste disposal regulations and a lack of adequate enforcement action.

He said that garbage was often "collected ad infinitum only to fill up a landfill” and “then the companies involved simply disappeared.”

When asked if the fires were caused by arsonists, Kowalczyk replied that there is no "hard evidence," but "it's difficult to believe in a coincidence when a permit expires and the landfill goes on fire."

"I think that reason tells one to be very suspicious" in such cases, Kowalczyk said.

He added that the problem had intensified after China “stopped accepting waste” at the end of last year.

Ever since then “waste—mostly illegal—from Western Europe has been appearing in [Poland], exacerbating the problem,” he said.

(gs/pk)

Source: IAR/PAP