Blue skies no more

A file picture taken last week of the South China Sea fronting Miri city that is not visible due to a veil of haze.

THE haze made an unwelcome return to Sarawak this week, even as it was announced that the 10th Better Air Quality (BAQ) conference will be held in Kuching in November.

For the past few days the state has been sweltering in hot and hazy conditions. It was particularly bad in Sibu and Mukah, where the air pollutant index (API) reached unhealthy levels on Wednesday and Thursday.

The API reached a high of 146 in Mukah at 5am on Thursday and remained in the unhealthy range until early yesterday morning when it dropped to the moderate range.

A reading of 0-50 is considered good, 51-100 moderate and 101-200 unhealthy.

In Kuching, where the API has been hovering in the 80s, there’s a distinctively unpleasant smell of smoke in the air and the sky has turned a dirty white colour with hardly a patch of blue to be seen.

It looks like most of it is coming from across the border. According to the Singapore-based Asean Specialised Meteorological Centre’s website, the number of hotspots detected in Kalimantan spiked to 243 on Wednesday, up from 120 on Tuesday and 50 on Monday, although it dropped slightly to 171 on Thursday.

Hotspots were also detected in Sarawak, comprising seven on Tuesday, 11 on Wednesday and four on Thursday.

Natural Resources and Environment Board (NREB) controller Peter Sawal said the haze could last until the end of the month or longer depending on the weather and wind direction.

“From the briefing by the Meterological Department, we’re expecting that this month our weather will be dry with rainfall a bit below normal.

“But things may change, we may experience intermittent rain and that will dampen the weather.

“However, we also monitor the situation because of the high number of hotspots detected across the border and the wind direction towards us,” he told reporters after a press conference announcing the BAQ conference on Wednesday.

He earlier acknowledged the timeliness of the conference in view of the current hazy conditions in the state.

Both Sawal and Glynda Bathan from conference organiser Clean Air Asia made the point that air pollution was not just a local problem but a national and international one.

“So there is a need to solve it in partnership with others,” Bathan said.

In line with this, strengthening regional action to address transboundary air pollution is set to be a topic of discussion at the BAQ conference.

Hopefully this will result in stronger regional action and concrete solutions to address this issue.

But really, this is something that should have been done already.

Transboundary haze is a problem that occurs pretty much at the same time every year and affects a number of countries in the region.

Three years ago it was so bad that schools had to be closed and flights were disrupted as the API breached the very unhealthy mark in Kuching and Samarahan.

We need stronger political will, cooperation and action at national and regional level to solve this problem.

There is really no good reason why we have to put up with the haze every year.