TWELVE private international schools in the Klang Valley, Putrajaya, Cyberjaya and Negri Sembilan are closed today due to unhealthy air quality.

The Education Ministry’s Private Education Division said it was notified of the closures by four international schools in Selangor, four in Kuala Lumpur, two in Putrajaya and one each in Cyberjaya and Negri Sembilan.

The closure has affected 7,432 school children.

This follows school closures in Port Dickson, where air pollutant index (API) readings reached 212 at 10am today.

In Nilai, the reading was at 202 this morning.

Schools are under orders to suspend classes once the API breaches the 200 mark, which denotes very unhealthy air.

More than 160 schools in Putrajaya and Selangor were ordered to close yesterday.

According to the API Malaysia website, there are 28 areas in the country with “unhealthy” to “very unhealthy” air, all of them in Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Malacca, northern Johor and eastern Pahang.

Most of the readings in these areas showed a pattern of worsening air quality, with smoke from forest fires in neighbouring Indonesia continuing to blanket parts of Malaysia and Singapore. – September 17, 2019.