K Sudhagaran Stanley, the northern region coordinator for Center to Combat Corruption and Cronyism, said the reports showed that Malaysia’s borders are porous and warned that this could escalate to an issue of national security.
If unchecked, he added, it could lead to Malaysia becoming “the world’s garbage dump”.
It was reported yesterday that piles of garbage, mostly from China, had been dumped in an oil palm estate in Bukit Teh, Bukit Mertajam.
Today, FMT revealed that thousands of containers laden with electronic waste or e-waste from Europe and the US were illegally imported through the ports in Pasir Gudang and Klang.
Sudhagaran told FMT that the government should audit all seaports to discover how illegal waste from other countries could end up in Malaysia.
“How could China waste end up here without the authorities knowing about it? Where is the loophole, and who are the criminals involved?
“If this is indeed a failure of the Customs Department, then we might have a national security issue on our hands,” he said.
He urged the police and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission to immediately investigate the dumping in Penang, Port Klang and Johor.
As for the case in Bukit Mertajam, he said the Penang government must take the matter seriously and enact more local laws to prevent land from being turned into dump sites.
“It appears that things like this have been happening for three years,” he added.
“Why are the local authorities taking so long to resolve this? This is sheer incompetence.”
Sahabat Alam Malaysia president SM Mohamed Idris suggested a system to tag and track manufacturing and imported waste to monitor where such waste ends up.
He also called for more laws on illegal dumping, saying many companies are bypassing checks by declaring their consignments as something else at the ports.
“The importer could escape checks by registering solid waste under a different code – you slip through the radar,” he said.
“The only way to resolve this is the old-fashioned manual check of all big consignments entering the country.”
He also questioned how the landowners of the site in Bukit Mertajam could be unaware of events there.
The Seberang Perai Municipal Council gave notices to clear the land to three landowners at Kampung Berangan Sembilan, Bukit Teh, Bukit Mertajam yesterday.
The clearing at the oil palm plantation had been found to be a dumping site, with barrels of unknown chemicals discovered there.
Samples have been sent to the Chemistry Department for analysis.