Poh checking the polluted Sungai Tebrau in Kampung Bakar Batu, Permas Jaya in Johor Baru. — Photos by THOMAS YONG/The Star
INTEREST groups in Johor want the Federal Government to give focus to environmental issues such as river rehabilitation in Budget 2023.
Safe Johor River founder Poh Pai Yik said past budgets often failed to take into account the need for environmental protection.
He stressed that efforts to rehabilitate polluted water sources must be made a priority to ensure security of water supply for Johoreans.
“We hope the Federal Government will give adequate allocation to Johor under Budget 2023 to rehabilitate and rejuvenate dead and polluted rivers in Johor,” he said when contacted by StarMetro.
Budget 2023 is expected to be retabled in Parliament on Feb 24.
Poh also stressed that cooperation between the Federal and state governments, as well as among agencies, was vital.
While floods in Johor and Pahang were yearly occurrences brought about by the northeast monsoon, he said the government needed to look into the core problems to reduce its impact on the people.
“It is easy to blame the weather or Mother Nature but most of the time we are also to blame for the disasters,” he said.
He attributed the floods to dead and polluted rivers with restricted flow due to uncontrolled human economic activities.
Poh urged the Johor government to come down hard on environmental polluters as they were not only damaging the environment but also causing inconvenience to the people.
“We need to review outdated laws which most of the time hamper efforts to address environmental-related problems,” he emphasised.
Green Earth Society Johor president P. Sivakumar said Malaysia must be proactive in managing environmental issues.
“Instead of addressing the root cause, the government has focused more on treating the symptoms by going for one-off solutions,” he noted.
The floods that hit Johor every year, he cited, were examples of a lack of concrete action by the Federal Government.
“While the weather is beyond our control, we should all work together to reduce the impact of catastrophes or natural disasters,” he said.
Sivakumar said mitigating floods was more than deepening rivers or coming out with multi-million ringgit projects.
“The Federal Government should give funds to the state governments to plant more trees as well as rehabilitate and rejuvenate dead and polluted rivers,” he said.
Sivakumar said dead rivers would lead to droughts during dry weather and impact agricultural activities.
He hoped the tabling of Budget 2023 would also take into account global warming and climate change, which was affecting the entire world.
“We should look at how the prolonged drought in Africa is causing famine and water shortage in some countries there,” he said.
He warned that Malaysia would also suffer if no action was taken by the government to address the impacts from global warming and climate change.
Poh checking the polluted Sungai Tebrau in Kampung Bakar Batu, Permas Jaya in Johor Baru. — Photos by THOMAS YONG/The Star
Houses in Kampung Parit Warijo, Sri Medan in Batu Pahat, Johor, inundated by floods due to the northeast monsoon.
