PASIR Gudang is now equipped with a system, worth RM6.9 million, capable of detecting harmful pollutants in the air to provide early warnings in the event of any contamination, making it the first  industrial city in the country with the facility.

Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change Minister Yeo Bee Yin said the system would monitor air quality in real time to provide early warnings in the event of an air pollution incident.

“The Air Pollution Early Warning System is equipped with an alarm to detect hazardous pollutants in the air that will directly alert enforcement officers at the Department of Environment (DoE) to enable immediate action over the source of the pollution.

“It involves the installation of 25 Photoionisation Detector (PID) stations in 25 locations, including schools around Pasir Gudang, and six units of Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), as well as two units of portable Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS) and Gas Chromatography-Flame Ionisation Detector (GC-FID),” she told a press conference at the Pasir Gudang DoE branch today.

Earlier, Yeo, accompanied by the ministry’s deputy secretary-general (Environment and Climate Change) Dr Nagulendran; state Local Government, Urban Well-being and Environment Committee chairman Tan Chen Choon; DoE director-general Norlin Jaafar and state DoE director Mohd Famey Yusoff, visited the PID station at the Pasir Gudang Municipal Council Stadium to observe its operation.

Yeo said the government, in efforts to avoid a recurrence of the Sg Kim Kim pollution incident in March last year, has taken various steps to increase industrial monitoring in the area, and the installation of the early pollution warning system is one of them.

If the system proves successful, it will be extended to other industrial areas in the country, she added.

The public, she said, can also access information from the system through the DoE website by the second quarter of this year. 

In a related development, Yeo said the DoE has intensified its enforcement on factories and industrial premises in Pasir Gudang to ensure their compliance with laws and regulations.

She said 664 inspections were carried out last year, compared with 460 premises the previous year. 

The government will not compromise with environmental criminals, she said, adding that the suspect in the Sg Kim Kim pollution incident has been charged in court.

Besides enforcement action, Yeo said, the DoE also carries out monitoring through online systems, such as industrial effluent discharge quality through the Online Environmental Reporting (OER) and scheduled waste disposal through the Electronic Schedule Waste Information System (E-SWIS).

The system detects the movement of scheduled waste from the industry to the DoE-licenced processing or disposal facilities, she added.

She said monitoring by drones has also been carried out since October 23 to detect any possible pollution and sources of contamination so that early preventive measures can be taken. – Bernama, February 23, 2020.