Awang Tengah (standing third right) and others witnessing the MoU signing between NREB and four corporate land owners.
MIRI: It’s time for landowners to take responsibility in fire prevention and suppression or risk being slapped with all costs incurred by the government in putting out bush and peat fires.
The onus is also on them to protect and prevent illegal burning on their lands, Second Minister of Resource Planning and Environment Datuk Amar Awang Tengah Ali Hasan pointed out.
He gave this reminder yesterday at the signing of a memorandum of undertaking (MoU) for peat fire prevention and suppression in Kuala Baram at Pullman Hotel Miri. The MoU was signed between Natural Resources and Environment Board (NREB) and corporate land owners Naim Land Sdn Bhd, Shin Yang Forestry Sdn Bhd, Woodman Group of Companies and Pantai Bayu Indah Sdn.
The minister said controlling and suppressing peat fires was costly and the government would not hesitate to invoke Section 10 of the Natural Resources and Environment Ordinance (NREO) on guilty landowners.
“From Feb 23 – 27 this year, due to the widespread peat burning, the government was forced to deploy a Bombardier plane to assist in water bombing to suppress peat fires which involved a total of 222 trips or about 38.8 flying hours utilising 1.3 million litres of water that cost RM834,2000,” he said.
He added that the amount did not include other direct and indirect costs by the Fire and Rescue Services Department, NREB and Department of Environment (DOE) in mobilising their manpower to conduct surveillance, ground monitoring and enforcement.
Based on NREB record, a total of 4,481 ha of peat lands within Kuala Baram were burned since 2009, mostly in undeveloped land banks of a few major companies.
“Early this year, 1,773 hectares of peatland in Kuala Baram were burned in yet to be developed areas or land banks that belonged to the landowners,” he said.
Awang Tengah also said there had been incidents where workers of these landowners started open burning with the intention of farming the land which ended up with the fires getting out of control and spreading to other areas.
“ILP (Institut Latihan Perindustrian) was shut down for a week, Curtin University students had to be relocated and Miri’s tourism industry was affected,” he reminded.
The state government through its High Performance Team (HPT) 2015 came up with the solution to permanently address the perennial issue of bush and peat fires in Miri by requiring land owners to establish a standard operating procedure (SOP) for prevention and suppression of peat fires.
The SOP provides the guideline for landowners to prevent fire outbreak and action plans for effective fire suppression in their respective lands.
Awang Tengah hailed the SOP as the first in the country involving the government and private sector to prevent open burning at the Kuala Baram peat land area that has been a major cause of haze.
“The SOP is the first of its kind in Malaysia to address haze issues from local sources,” he said.
He called on other companies in the state to adopt the SOP.
The minister also called on landowners to give their fire fighting team proper training in dealing with any outbreak of fire on their lands.
Also present were Assistant Minister of Environment Datuk Len Talif Salleh, Assistant Minister of Welfare and Community Wellbeing Dr Abdul Rahman Ismail, Assistant Minister of Tourism Datuk Lee Kim Shin, permanent secretary to Ministry of Resource Planning and Environment Datu Sudarsono Osman, Miri Resident Antonio Kahti Galis and heads of government departments and agencies.