Assemblyman lodges report with MACC over illegal plastic recycling factory

PUTRAJAYA: Selangor Exco Ronnie Liu has lodged a report with the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) over an allegedly illegal plastic recycling factory operating in Sepang.

The Sungai Pelek assemblyman said that a high-ranking official of the Sepang Council had granted a six-month temporary license to the company, which he said was emitting foul smells and had cause a river behind it to be polluted, among other things.

Liu said the license was issued without a development order or an Environment Impact Assessment (EIA).

He said that council members of the Sepang Municipal Council had rejected the granting of the license during a meeting on May 28, but the official declined to retract the license.

He said that before Hari Raya, he had met the official who promised that the factory would be closed, but to no avail.

He had met the official again after Hari Raya, who promised him that the factory would be closed within a week, but Liu said that as of two days ago, the factory was still operating.

"The public suspects there is some hanky panky going on," he told reporters here at the MACC headquarters on Friday (June 21).

The issue of illegal recycling factories gained attention last year when dozens of such factories that caused pollution in Kuala Langat were widely exposed.

This was after China banned plastic imports in 2018, leading to a huge impact on the global recycling system.

This led to a number of Chinese companies relocating their operations to Malaysia, with some setting up shop here as soon as the Chinese government announced the ban in 2017.

In May, the Ministry of Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change (Mestecc) said that the government would be sending back 450 metric tonnes of contaminated plastic waste in 10 containers back to their countries of origin immediately.

The waste smuggled in was falsely declared as recyclable.