Trio charged with polluting river

JOHOR BARU: Two directors and a lorry driver of a used tyre-processing company were charged in the Sessions Court here over the chemical dumping incident at Sungai Kim Kim in Pasir Gudang.

The three accused are Singa­porean Wang Jin Chao, 34, and Malaysians Yap Yoke Liang, 36, and lorry driver N. Maridass, 35.

According to the charge sheet, Maridass is accused of illegally disposing of chemicals into Sungai Kim Kim on March 7, while Wang and Yap are accused of conspiring with him.

All three were charged under Section 34B(1)(a) of the Environment Quality Act 1974.

Yap and Wang were also charged under Section 42 of the same Act.

If convicted, they can be jailed up to five years and fined a maximum of RM500,000.

The three men pleaded not guilty when the charges were read before judge Jailani Rahman who then imposed a bail of RM100,000 on Maridass and RM250,000 on Yap in one surety each.

Yap was also ordered to hand over his passport while Wang was not offered bail as he is a foreigner.

The two Malaysians did not post bail.

Meanwhile, in the same court, the company, together with Yap, Wang and another director, who has yet to be arrested, were slapped with a total of 60 charges.

They were accused by the De­­partm­ent of Environment (DoE) of committing 15 offences.

However, Jailani postponed the case to 10am today due to a technical issue arising from the details in the DoE charge sheet, despite the prosecution wanting the case to proceed.

“I can wait until 6pm, 7pm or even 10pm, but I pity my court interpreters who have to wait here,” he said, reprimanding the DoE for the technical glitch in the charge sheet.

Jailani then postponed the case while Yap and Wang were sent to the Ulu Choh remand centre.

Deputy Public Prosecutors Moha­mad Asyraf Md Kamal and Farra Nor Azura Jumuddin prosecuted while lawyer G. Subramaniam Nair represented Yap and Wang.

Maridass was represented by S. Rathakrishna.