SHAH ALAM: Selangor has no intention of placing a ban on the import of plastic waste, despite mounting pollution concerns threatening the environment.
State Environment, Green Technology and Consumer Affairs committee chairman Hee Loy Sian said this would be unfair to factories that were authorised by the state government who have spent millions for plastic recycling purposes.
“Yes, there are people who misused their approved permits (AP) to set up illegal factories, but there are also legal ones. They have forked out a lot of money to treat the water and buy their sophisticated machines and air filters.
“As such, they have the right to import these plastic waste to be processed. We have thought about banning altogether the import, but we must know there are many factories who are abiding by the law.
“If we stop issuing APs, it will be unfair to them as they have invested millions,” he told the state legislative assembly, here, today.
Hee was responding to a question from Dr Idris Ahmad (PH-Ijok) on whether the government has any plans to cancel APs that have been issued to address the issue of pollution from plastic waste.
Commenting further, Hee said the majority of these APs were issued under the Barisan Nasional (BN) administration when they were in federal power prior to May 9.
“It was under BN that these APs were issued to the plastic waste factory operators. It happened before the 14th General Election, when many of the permits were misused,” he said.
Malaysia became a major destination for recyclable plastic waste from foreign countries, including the United States, Britain, South Korea and Spain, after China banned fresh imports earlier this year, with many of these recycling factories existing in Selangor.
Hee said there were 55 factories operating in Kuala Langat alone, 33 of which were illegal factories operating without a permit.
“17 are authorised ones while the remaining five are still undergoing a rehabilitation process,” he said.
Hee also noted that the Housing and Local Government Ministry had previously frozen the issuance of new APs for the import of plastic waste for three months from July 23, 2018, and that following this, only clean plastic waste were allowed to be imported.
