KUALA LUMPUR: The Environmental Protection Bill, drafted in 2017 to replace the Environmental Quality Act 1974, must be passed immediately to empower federal departments to act against industries that pollute river reserves.
Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives Minister Datuk Seri Dr Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar said new provisions would enable the ministry and its agencies to shut down illegal factories or force them to relocate.
Wan Junaidi, who was natural resources and environment minister from 2015 to 2018, said the law should give more power to the Environment Department (DoE) to bring those who pollute to justice.
"The bill is simple. It states that factories or workshops should not be built near rivers and they are not to be built above water reservoirs.
"They must be below the reservoirs, so in case of flooding, dirt and polluted materials will not contaminate reservoirs.
"(The bill) mandates factories to clean waste water discharge before releasing it into the environment.
"When Sungai Semenyih was polluted by illegal factories in 2016, for instance, we could not act as the matter fell under the jurisdiction of the local authority.
"The ministry's agencies were forced to go back and forth in dealing with the local council," Wan Junaidi told the New Straits Times, following the pollution in Sungai Gong that led to water cuts in the Klang Valley since Thursday.
The Sungai Semenyih water treatment plant was shut down twice in 2016 following contamination caused by pollutants released from factories in the Semenyih hi-tech industrial area.
In December, the plant was again shut down due to odour pollution where the source of the contamination was traced to a sewage treatment facility in Bandar Bukit Mahkota.
However, he said, the approval of the bill was delayed following the appointment of Yeo Bee Yin as the then energy, science, technology, environment and climate change minister.
Wan Junaidi said the present environment and water minister, Datuk Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man, could adopt the bill and engage stakeholders and state governments to end the perennial issue.
He said the Selangor government should re-look all development near water resources, including factories operating upstream of water intakes.
"The state is not doing enough. No clear explanation has been given to the people.
"The interest of the people is important, not just (the interest of) a few businesses that are likely the ones causing the problem.
"Illegal factories and other premises found not complying with standard procedures, including proper waste management, should be demolished or asked to shut down.
"Simply issuing a compound is not sufficient as paying a sum of money could mean nothing to rich factory operators."
He said many factories, including machine maintenance workshops, were built near rivers so that they could use water from the river.
But the problem arose when the waste water, which contains chemicals and oils, was not cleaned before it was channelled back into the river, which led to pollution.
"The authorities have identified the people behind this (Sungai Selangor) pollution, which is an illegal maintenance workshop near the river where the waste materials (including oil, diesel and engine oil) from servicing vehicles were flowing into the river.
"There may be other factories involved, but the reason is the same, which is that they failed to clean the waste before channelling it back into the river.
"This falls under the local council's jurisdiction. The federal ministry and its departments have no authority to act."