The river pollution in Malaysia has reached an alarming stage with an average of 2,200 tonnes of rubbish being collected every month from the Malaysian waterways. The awareness level among the public is still frustrating, despite the launch of ‘Love Our River’ campaign 10 years ago and several other campaigns meant to create awareness and educate the public.
A total of 21 tonnes of rubbish is collected in the upper part of Klang River alone, which includes Sungai Gombak and Sungai Batu.
According to Malaysian Water Partnership (MyWP) vice-chairman Datuk Hanapi Mohamad Noor, the public is not willing to take the responsibility to keep the rivers clean and wholly depend on the authorities to clean up after them. But it is difficult for the authorities to continue without the support of the public.
“Statistics shows that someone is throwing rubbish into the river every second and 700kg rubbish is dumped into the upper areas of Klang River every day.”
Currently, there are 11 trash screens set across the river and 500 gross pollutant traps built in the drains to prevent the rubbish from flowing into the rivers. The cleaning and maintenance of these rivers cost up to RM100 million annually.
According to a representative of the Drainage and Irrigation Department’s (DID) Klang River basin office, household trashe such as sofa sets, mattresses, refrigerators, washing machines and motorcycle frames are commonly found in the river.
“Many take the easy way out by dumping everything into the river, without thinking about the consequences. Some of the rubbish thrown into the river takes ages to decompose,” he added.
The government allocated RM114 million for the ‘One State One River’ programme from 2006 to 2007, as well as, allocated RM3 billion to clean up and beautify the rivers under the ‘River of Life’ project.
Yet this alone cannot prevent river pollution, as the public should be considerate and show support in reviving these polluted rivers.
Images: Sourced from The Star
Mangalesri Chandrasekaran, Editor at PropertyGuru, edited this story. To contact her about this or other stories email mangales@propertyguru.com.my
