KOTA KINABALU: A police report has been lodged over alleged toxic waste pollution at the controversial gold mine in Sabah’s east coast Tawau district.
Acting Tawau police chief Supt Champin Piuh confirmed that the report was lodged by a staff member of the company that owned the land at Bukit Mintri in Balung at 9.19am on Monday.
He did, however, state that the Criminal Investigation Department conducted a thorough investigation and discovered no criminal element.
“The matter would be referred to the Environment Department and the Court for (alleged) breach of a court order,” he said yesterday.In the report, the complainant claimed a company that operated the gold mining activities on the land had discarded untreated sodium cyanide from its factory, which then allegedly overflowed to Sungai Mintri located in a first-class forest reserve near the factory. The report also claimed this started during the recent festive period.
The gold mining operations have courted controversy since last year, with Sabah PKR leader Sazalye Donol Abdullah urging the Prime Minister’s intervention in the matter last month.
Sazalye said Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim should step in to resolve an apparent conflict over state and federal laws in the controversial gold mining operations in Tawau. Sazalye also said the gold mining operations were shrouded in legal questions as the state government seemed to have overridden the federal powers to allow them to continue.
He added that despite the federal Mineral and Geoscience Department, through the Inspector of Mines, issuing a stop order on gold mining operations in November last year, it continued its operations with the government, giving the go-ahead through the Sabah Mining Ordinance 1960.Previously, Assistant Minister to Chief Minister Datuk Abdin Madingkir said that the mining operations were legal as the state mining ordinance allowed for the director of the Land and Survey Department, Datuk Bernard Liew, to be the Chief Inspector of Mining.Last December, it was reported that there were residents who claimed they suffered from sickness and nausea after inhaling toxic waste from the mine.
State Health director Dr Asits Sanna said that no private, government or hospital health facilities in Tawau had reported any cases of sodium cyanide poisoning from the mine.
A follow-up probe by the Tawau Health Office found no truth to the poisoning claims, adding that an inspection of the village and surrounding areas also did not find such cases. He said the use of cyanide to extract gold was a closed and secure process.
