THIS newspaper has long advocated the "polluters pay" principle. And so have others. Judging by the Water Services (Amendment) Bill 2024 that is making its read ing rounds in the Parliament, Putrajaya seems to have taken note.
Current laws make them pay, too, but the fines are too paltry, leaving water companies, the government, businesses and the people in the red. We will only know how far Putrajaya is prepared to go to make polluters really pay once the bill is passed.
Remediation is there, but to what extent? The present draft appears not to go far enough. Here is why. The bill appears not to solve jurisdictional issues: federal versus state. Rivers are under the jurisdiction of the states through which they flow.
For federal authorities to act against the polluters of state rivers, constitutional amendments may be necessary. Without such an amendment, federal laws, like the one attempted in 2020 which gave powers to the Department of Environment to close down polluting factories, would remain drafts forever.
The alternative is for every state to pass laws that adopt the polluters pay principle. Again, this may not happen. Take the case of what happened in Selangor in 2020.
A factory dumped effluents into Sungai Gong, near Rawang. But this wasn't the first time that effluents got dumped in Sungai Gong or other rivers in Selangor or elsewhere in the country.
Factories and the like along riverbanks have been dumping all manner of effluents and other pollutants into rivers for years. And the sad part is that many have been getting away with it. Politics be fore pollution?
River pollution is a serious thing. A glimpse of it was seen in the Sungai Gong incident in 2020. Water supply to 1,292 areas in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor was disrupted. A total of 1.2 million were without water.
Who pays for the cost of disruption and remediation? Everybody else but the polluters. This is a recipe for impunity.
The factory that stood accused of dumping effluents into Sungai Gong wasn't a first offender. What is worse, it was operating without a licence for years, according to reports quoting the Selayang Municipal Council.
The factory wasn't the only one; there were more than 300 others so "privileged".
Little wonder, polluters are repeat offenders.
There is an equally compelling reason why we must make polluters pay. The polluters pay principle is embedded in the Rio Declaration on the Environment and Development 1992, to which Malaysia is a party.
Decades have passed and we are still some distance away from giving full force to the principle.
Other state parties to the Rio Declaration have long given legislative "teeth" to the polluters pay principle. Australia was the first, with New South Wales showing the way to other states.
The European Union, Ghana and Zimbabwe followed. Malaysia has yet to join the list. For sure, the bill that is now in the Dewan Rakyat does make polluters "pay ", but not in the sense that the Rio Declaration envisages.
For one, it doesn't just cover river pollution, but the environment as a whole. And "pay " covers all senses of the word.