Haze hits Malaysian town again

Haze hits Malaysian town again

Associated Press, Kuala Lumpur

Smoke from fires set to clear land in Indonesia has shrouded much
of neighboring Malaysia in haze, causing a marked drop in air
quality, news reports and officials said Thursday.

Visibility in several parts of the country had been reduced to
as low as two kilometers from the normal ten kilometers, a
meteorological department official told The Associated Press on
customary condition of anonymity.

Air quality in most parts of the country had dipped from
"good" to "moderate," The Star daily cited Rosnani Ibrahim, the
environment ministry's director-general, as saying. Moderate is
the second-best level in five tiers of air-quality ratings from
good to dangerous.

"The drop in air quality is caused by particulate matter
blowing in from the fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan," she told
the daily. Rosnani was not immediately available for comment.

In June, smoke from wildfires in Indonesia is drifted across
neighboring Malaysia, shrouding Kuala Lumpur and the northern
island resort of Penang in thick haze and sending air quality
plummeting to the third-tier "unhealth" level for several days.

Officials blamed the smog on more than one hundred "hot spots"
in Sumatra, which is separated from peninsular Malaysia by the
narrow Straits of Malacca, and Kalimantan, which borders the
Malaysian state of Sarawak on Borneo island.

Deputy Environment Minister S. Sothinathan said Malaysia would
again contact the Indonesian government "to express our concern
over the recurrence of the haze," The Star reported.

"We will seek their cooperation to put out the fires as soon
as possible," Sothinathan told the daily.

Fires set illegally by Indonesian and Malaysian farmers to
clear land are blamed for haze that clouds skies in parts of
Southeast Asia each dry season.

In 1997-98, fires set mainly on oil palm plantations and
agricultural holdings in Indonesia's Sumatra and Kalimantan
provinces burned out of control for weeks, destroying 10 million
hectares and blanketing Singapore and parts of Malaysia and
Indonesia with thick smoke.

The ecological disaster sparked a diplomatic row, with
economic losses estimated at around US$9.3 billion, and prompted
a 2002 agreement to fight transborder pollution from forest
fires.