By Peter Sibon
KUCHING, August 26: Seven out of the 34 containers filled with plastic wastes which have been stranded at Kuching Port Authority (KPA) have already been cleared to be shipped out to their country of origin, revealed KPA General Manager Robert Lau.
He said the remaining 27 containers are currently waiting for the arrangement to be made by the consignees with their shipping agents after clearance from both the Department of Environment and Customs Department.
“After we have sent back the seven containers to their country of origin, we will also clear the remaining containers as soon as possible,” Lau told Dayak Daily when contacted today.
When asked how these containers managed to sneak into KPA, Lau said it was done by local consignees, but refused to speculate as to whether they (the consignees) knew these containers actually contain plastic wastes.
“That, we can’t speculate. We leave that to the relevant authorities to investigate. We are an innocent party here,” he reiterated.
According to earlier reports, a total of 34 containers filled with plastic waste have remain stranded at KPA, where 27 out of the 34 containers were from Canada and the remaining seven were from the United States.
Lau also revealed that since July 2018, a total of 119 containers of plastic waste from countries such as the United States, Canada and France were detected by the Customs Department who alerted KPA.
Lau said, KPA has since sent back 85 of these containers, of which 42 were returned to the United State.
The issue surfaced after Environment and Water Minister Datuk Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man recently revealed during Parliament of the presence of these plastic waste containers found in certain ports in the country, including KPA.
It is believed that the plastic waste-filled containers started arriving in Malaysia when China implemented a new policy on January 1, 2018 that it would stop the import of 24 types of solid waste from foreign countries.
“When they banned the import of these solid wastes, the containers were probably on their way there and so eventually some of them were redirected to countries such as the Philippines, Thailand or Malaysia,” added Lau.
Meanwhile, when contacted, Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Datuk Amar Dr James Jemut Masing hoped that the issue will be settled amicably, and reiterated that Malaysia should not be turned into a rubbish dump by first world countries. — DayakDaily
