ONE would have thought that all officers of the Department of Environment (DoE) would care for the environment.
Not the ones that the Enforcement Agency Integrity Commission (EAIC) has been investigating, it seems.
Not a few, but several officers were involved in an attempt to get containers filled with electronic waste (e-waste) released from Westport in Port Klang "without clear authority and reasonable justification", said the EAIC on Monday.
That is not all.
Instead of speeding up the investigation, the department significantly delayed the probe.
The EAIC attributed this to supervisory weaknesses, warning that such delays could lead to environmental pollution and government losses. Little wonder the release of e-waste without authority goes unnoticed so easily.
An overwhelming question needs asking: are cartels turning Malaysia into a wasteland? Because this is not the first time containers filled with e-waste from developed countries have landed here.
Between Aug 17 and Oct 4, the Customs Department seized 107 containers filled with more than 2,118 tonnes of e-waste that were brought into Malaysia illegally.
To escape detection, the importers falsely declared the e-waste to be all things aluminium. It is now a police case, with the Customs Department hinting at the possibility of syndicates at work here.
In just 48 days, 107 containers of illegal e-waste can't just be a case of crass commerce, can it? In Dec 2022, the DoE disclosed that 31 containers filled with e-waste were detained at Westport in the year.
Some of the countries of origin were the United States, Spain, Australia, Belgium and Japan.
Maybe these countries are not getting the message that Malaysia isn't a dumping ground for their e-waste.
The Basel Convention on The Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal is clear: all scheduled movements of e-waste must have prior approval before it is exported or imported.
Despite the Basel Convention's strictures, the ceaseless arrival of e-waste containers at Westport and other ports indicates systemic issues.
The authorities must ask themselves: why is it so easy to bring the e-waste illegally into Malaysia?
We put forth two reasons. First, importers — or are they members of cartels? — who falsely declare e-waste to be something else are being let off with a slap on the wrist.
A penalty of a few hundred thousand ringgit is peanuts to cartels. Second, there appears to be a link between e-waste imports and illegal e-waste processing plants mushrooming around the country.
Some of these were found to be run by criminal gangs from China, as raids by police and regulators have revealed.
In July, regulators shut down two factories operated by Chinese gangs in Kedah — one processing e-waste and the other plastic waste, both imported into the country illegally.
In Sept, police raided six such premises in Klang, Selangor and seized RM41 million worth of processed metals.
Some of the factories make over RM10 million a month, reason enough for over 200 illegal e-waste processing plants to set up shop here.
But why Malaysia? Because there are enough errant regulators here to make it a cartel land.