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The Sabah Anglers Association (SAA) said it seconds Sabah Environmental Protection Association's (Sepa) support for Environment Minister Datuk Masidi Manjun to rein in defiant palm oil mills for tough discipline.
"Masidi himself has said that river pollution in Sabah has gone out of hand, so let's hope it won't be just rhetoric safeguarding State resources and environment but that we'll walk the talk," said SAA President, Datuk Wilfred Lingham, a former Permanent Secretary of Masidi's Ministry.
"The Sabah Anglers Association supports whatever activities the Ministry undertakes in this direction," Lingham said. "It is time to tell the oil palm industry to get their priorities right and scope of concern widened and the first priority is protection and conservation of the State's natural capital which is our under-pinning structure for adding value in all other developmental pursuits," Lingham said. "Their singular priority at the moment is making money but I do know there are friends and managers in the industry who are sensitive and very intelligent about the environmental imperative. We hope they will help drive a persuasive charge forward before radical action of jailing bosses comes to past," he said.
Lingham said he agreed with Sepa President Wong Tack that State agencies like the Environmental Protection Department under the Ministry needs support and fine-tuning to deal with a matter that has gone out of hand.
"It has been noted that 80 per cent of river water quality pollution comes from palm oil mills and plantations," he said.
"I have ventured to the Segama River and saw fish, prawns, catfish floating in the river. I asked villagers what happened and they pointed to ' kelapa sawit banyak kotor' (very dirty palm oil)," he said."What I mean local villagers depend so much on rivers for fish and prawns for both self consumption and sale for their livelihood," Lingham said."I have tried to fish in Segama where the fish we caught was very small, the big ones have gone, either because of over-fishing or because the pollutants have destroyed their habitats as well as their food chain," he argued.
"Not only that, crocodiles are now taking human and the reason is simple - they have no more fish to eat and so they go for domestic animals and human," said Lingham, citing a case when he was once forced to order the trapping of a large and very aggressive killer estuarine crocodile near Lahad Datu because it had eaten a child and many domestic dogs when he was still the Permanent Secretary.
13 comments:
The oil palm industry should play their part to protect the rivers from pollution as well. We still need a clean source of water.
no one is exempted from preserving the cleanliness of our rivers and waterways. We should play an active role in this matter.
Concern money more and neglect the environment - irresponsible act!
It is saddened when some people have the awareness but lack of efforts to practice it.
Pengusaha kelapa sawit perlulah mengurus sisa-sia kelapa sawit mereka dengan baik supaya tidak menyebabkan pencemaran air.
Undang-undang yang lebih tegas diperlukan untuk memastikan tiada pengusaha yang menyebabkan pencemaran dengan operasi mereka.
usaha untuk menjaga alam sekitar harus disokong dan semua memainkan peranan untuk memastikan alam sekitar dilindungi.
semua harus bekerjasama menjaga alam sekitar. mana-mana pihak yng melakukan pencemaran harus dikenakan tindakan.
whatever the project we done we need to protect our environment.
dalam mana2 aktiviti, pengurusan alam sekitar perlu sistmatik.
Jabatan Alam Sekitar perlu lebih aktif melakukan pemantauan terhadap semua kilang-kilang yang beroperasi di negeri ini.. terutama sekali dibahagian pantai timur Sabah..
the government must act decisively by withdrawing the operating licenses to any company that fails to comply with environmental standards.
To have a better and healthy environment, we must reduce any kind of pollution. We must always keep remind our responsibility to the environment.
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