KUALA LUMPUR: A review of laws and standard operations are necessary to ensure polluters are held accountable for their actions, besides preventing water pollution from recurring.
Criminologist and psychologist Associate Professor Dr Geshina Ayu Mat Saat, who is Universiti Sains Malaysia's forensic science programme lecturer, and her student, Moganraj Devarajan, whose research is on green criminology, were commenting on the Sungai Selangor pollution.
Offenders, they said, should be made responsible for cleaning up the pollution they caused and restoring the quality of the environment so that ecosystems could function again.
"There is a need for accountability at every stage of the chain that enabled the factory to operate and reoffend, instead of depending on public complaints of law violations for action to be taken," they said in a statement to the New Straits Times.
They described the water pollution in Sungai Gong, Selangor, as "just one of a series of crimes" against human beings and every living thing dependent on water.
"Without water, life will cease. Although some people may be able to survive for a little bit longer, a person will begin to have organ failure by the third day without water.
"For many, water is also the means for them to make a living. Water is also an important part of religious practices. It becomes a calamity when the supply of clean water, which has been available all the while, is abruptly cut. Hospitals, schools, hotels, offices and neighbourhoods will be severely affected.
"Daily activities have been disrupted with the restriction on movement due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and now, more than a million people have a bigger burden to bear."
Geshina and Moganraj called on the authorities to look at the entire system that contributed to the lack of concern about the environment.
This, they said, concerned green criminology — a study on harms and crimes against the environment — which included environmental laws and policies, corporate crimes, actions and behaviours of environmental law violators, and environmental justice from a criminological perspective.
"It (the study) also investigates what sustains the behaviour of individuals or corporations which commit such crimes, and the continuation of the political economy of capitalism despite the known destruction of resources that people need in the first place."
For example, they said the Rawang machinery maintenance factory owners were repeat offenders who were fined RM60,000 for a previous offence.
This latest "crime" was a form of ecocide as the toxic chemicals that spilled into the river had caused extensive damage to the waterway's ecosystem, and it would continue to diminish the health and wellbeing of every living thing in these ecosystems, they said.
"Given that the offence was repeated and the level of harm caused by the culprits is even worse than the previous offence, the punishment for this offence needs to be more fitting."
Based on section 121 (2)(b) of the Water Services Industry Act 2006 (Act 655), if found guilty, the offender(s) shall be liable to imprisonment for not more than 10 years, or a fine not exceeding RM500,000, or caning, or all three. Alternatively, under Section 121 (2)(c) in any other case, they will be liable to a fine not exceeding RM100,000 or imprisonment for not more than one year, or both.
Section 79 (4) of the Selangor Waters Management Authority Enactment No. 2 (1999) could also be applied, in which upon conviction, the person(s) shall be liable to a fine not exceeding RM100,000, or to imprisonment not exceeding three years, or both, and to a further fine of RM3,000 for every day that the offence continued after a notice by the authorities requiring compliance had been served.
Geshina and Moganraj said there should be more educational awareness programmes about the importance of protecting the environment and water sources.
This should not only be a matter of educational syllabus, but a responsibility taken up by every person, they said.
"If protecting and caring for the environment is taught only to schoolchildren, but adults continue to throw rubbish and contaminate the environment, the lessons will never be absorbed by the younger generation.
"It will become part of the Malaysian culture and we will fail to achieve our target of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal Six (SDG6): clean water and sanitation.
"Failure to achieve SDG6 will affect efforts to achieve SDG3 — good health and wellbeing. Instead of moving forward, we will appear to move backwards," they said.
Page 1 pic: An aerial view of Sungai Gong in Rawang. Effluents from a machinery maintenance factory were allegedly released into the river.