Haze season chokes up more citizens

By Trinna Leong

The smoke that clouds the southern states has spread to include Negeri Sembilan (NS) while Pasir Gudang and Kota Tinggi in Johor have hazardous air pollutant index (API) readings of 310 and 313, respectively.

The town of Muar in Johor reached an all-time API high of 383 yesterday but its reading went down this morning to 183. However, Port Dickson and Seremban, both in NS, saw its respective API readings shoot up to 157 and 105, from yesterday's readings of 82 and 86.

Besides these two NS towns, five other areas are listed by the Department of Environment as unhealthy with API readings from 101 to 200. The areas are Banting (137), Bukit Rambai (164), Malacca town (192), Muar (183) and Larkin Lama (190).

Yesterday, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak called for the mobilisation of the health monitoring system to detect illnesses caused by the haze.

This came about after more than 400 schools were ordered to close, affecting over 190,000 students, while the number of respiratory and eye ailments saw a significant increase in the past three days.

The National Haze Action Plan, a series of protocols undertaken to protect Malaysians has been amended to allow the education ministry to safeguard the health of schoolchildren, according to the ministry's director-general Tan Sri Abd Ghafar Mahmud.

The health ministry took action by setting up 11 monitoring stations in Johor and Malacca but the meteorological department calls for cloud seeding.

"If the haze exceeds the stipulated API, immediate cloud seeding must be carried out to control the problem," said its deputy director-general Dr Mohd Rosaidi Che Abbas.

The haze is not just bad air as the Department of Environment has reported the presence of fine dust, worrying citizens as The Star reports the people of Johor scampering to purchase face masks, herbal tea packets to relieve sore throats and vitamin pills.

Johor had recorded an increase of 20 percent in patients with upper respiratory tract illnesses, according to its health department director Dr. Mohd Khairy Yaakub. Meanwhile, Malacca has seen such cases rise from 159 on Monday to 355 on Wednesday.

Malacca has also called for a health curfew if the API shoots above the "hazardous" level.

'We have survived tear gas, after all'

Despite the worsening haze, Pakatan Rakyat (PR) have not been deterred from holding its Black505 rally this Saturday.

"According to the Air Pollutant Index, Selangor still hasn't reached the unhealthy reading of 100 or above," PR's strategist Rafizi Ramli said yesterday.

"As it is now, I do not see an indication that people will not come because of the worry over the haze. We have survived tear gas, after all," he said.

The government has offered to assist Indonesia to contain the open burning in Sumatra.

"We always want to help Indonesia and are willing to send our fire brigade to put out fires as we did before. We already talked about this to them but have not received any response," said the Deputy Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Datuk Dr James Dawos Mamit.

Singapore is also affected badly by the haze and have demanded the Indonesian government to identify firms behind the slash-and-burn that it believes is causing the heavy smoke.

The Singapore government has even set up a Haze Inter-Ministerial Committee to mitigate the problem.

Meanwhile, the Indonesian government has attributed the smoke to forest fires. Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Agung Laksono was reported to have said that the fires occurred "because of nature".

Singapore's API reading was 256 as of 9am today. The government is now releasing the readings hourly instead of three times a day. - Malaysian Insider