KUANTAN: Senior officials from the state government have been tight-lipped over the past two days about the bauxite issue since the expose by the New Straits Times on the risks of radiation sickness to people.
Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Adnan Yaakob was unavailable for comments throughout yesterday.
Efforts made in the morning through an aide for his response showed positive signs as his office was gathering information from the relevant agencies to prepare his statement.
“We know what you (NST) need and we are trying to get the information,” the aide said.
After a few hours, the same aide replied to a short-messaging-service (SMS) to say that the menteri besar was unlikely to issue a statement on the matter yesterday.
“So far, (he is) not (issuing statement) yet,” the aide wrote in his reply to an SMS query from NST.
At about 2pm, word got around that Adnan would attend a Hari Raya open house at the state Information Department at Wisma Persekutuan. A wait at the venue to interview him proved futile as he did not show up.
An employee at the department said the menteri besar did not attend the event as he had a meeting.
Late in the afternoon, NST made calls to his mobile phone but they went unanswered.
Telephone calls and WhatsApp messages were also sent to state Public Amenities and Environment Committee chairman Datuk Mohd Soffi Abdul Razak, but there was no response.
On Monday, state government representatives were absent from a public dialogue to discuss the bauxite mining.
Only three of 13 seats allocated for the federal and state government agencies were filled at the session in Beserah here.
The organiser — the offices of assemblymen in Kuantan and Indera Mahkota — had reportedly said it was disappointing that those who could provide answers to public queries skipped the event.
NST has run articles over the past two days on the pollutants, including heavy metals entering a stream and the sea off Kuantan from bauxite mining activities.
On May 26, Soffi had downplayed the concerns and declared the so-called “red sea” phenomenon as not harmful to humans or marine life.
Soffi had said analysis conducted by the state Environment Department showed that waters near Tanjung Gelang, which had apparently been contaminated by bauxite washed up from the stockpile in Kuantan Port after recent rains, were free of heavy metals.
The results of independent analysis by the NST Probes Team, however, contradicted the findings by the state DoE.
The results, which came from samples taken five days after Soffi’s announcement, showed that not only had the uncontrolled mining resulted in the areas being contaminated with heavy metals, they also detected early stages of radiation contamination.