Better to prevent water pollution than giving discounts, says Selangor MB

 

Selangor Menteri Besar Amirudin Shari inspecting the water supply restoration work at the Sungai Selangor phase 2 water treatment plant on Monday. (Facebook pic)

SHAH ALAM: The Selangor government said it would be better for it to spend more on solving river pollution instead of giving discounts to residents affected by unscheduled water cuts.

Menteri Besar Amirudin Shari, however, said the proposal to offer discounts for water bills was still being considered.

Amirudin said the government would need to pay RM4 million to give a RM2 discount to users. He said giving such discounts might cause water pollution to be taken for granted.

“This is not going to solve the problem,” he said during a press conference when asked if the government was proposing discounts for residents whenever there was an unscheduled water cut.

Amirudin stressed that enforcement units needed to work harder to avoid pollution from occurring, noting that there had been no such incidents from April to September when rivers were being monitored around the clock.

“However, of late, there have been repeated incidents of pollution. Therefore, we must increase our enforcement.”

There were eight unscheduled water disruptions involving Selangor and Kuala Lumpur since the beginning of the year. These affected millions of residents and tankers had to be mobilised to provide water.

Most recently, 1.2 million Air Selangor account holders in 1,292 areas in the Klang Valley suffered water cuts for several days after treatment plants had to be shut down following odour pollution in Sungai Selangor.

The pollution is believed to have occurred at a Rawang company involved in repairing construction equipment. Several people running the company have been detained.

Amirudin said the government has outlined three strategies to tackle water pollution in Selangor over the next year.

This includes using technology to rid odour at water treatment plants, increasing the number of personnel to monitor rivers and deploying drones to inspect rivers and premises suspected of causing pollution.

“These drones can also check on the quality of river water.

“The cost of using a drone is around RM138 a day. They can fly twice a day for as far as 1,000km to provide an analysis of the water content.”

Amirudin said the state is offering a RM1,000 reward for people to provide information on those causing river pollution. - FMT