Malaysian PM vows to punish offenders as haze crisis worsens
Malaysian PM vows to punish offenders as haze crisis worsens
Elisia Yeo, Agence France-Presse/Kuala Lumpur
Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi vowed on Friday to punish the Malaysian owners of plantations in Indonesia whose clearance methods were blamed for sending a choking haze across Malaysia.
Malaysia would cooperate with Indonesia to punish Malaysian companies if they were found to have created the smog, Abdullah said, adding that plantation minister Peter Chin would be responsible for dealing with the matter.
"I leave it to Peter Chin to handle that. He may have to speak to the Indonesian authorities or ask them to let us deal with them and impose whatever penalties for what they have done," Abdullah said.
The plantation companies "should have realized that by burning there, it could affect their own country," he added.
Anger over Indonesia's inability to douse the forest fires which have smothered parts of Malaysia with a dangerous haze have mounted as the crisis worsened on Friday in the capital Kuala Lumpur.
Some 60 members of the opposition Democratic Action Party (DAP) held a protest at the Indonesian embassy in pollution- shrouded Kuala Lumpur, handing out paper face masks and calling for compensation.
"The Indonesian government must know the Malaysian people are angry," DAP secretary general Lim Guan Eng said, adding that these were "the sentiments of all Malaysians."
Deputy Prime Minister Najib Razak said a team of 100 firefighters was waiting for permission to head to the Indonesian island of Sumatra to help extinguish the fires and eliminate the clouds of smoke engulfing the west coast of Malaysia.
He said Indonesia had accepted the offer of help but that "bureaucratic" hurdles were holding up the firefighters' departure.
Malaysia declared a state of emergency on Thursday in two towns on the west coast which have borne the brunt of the smoke from Sumatra, separated from peninsular Malaysia by the narrow Malacca Strait.
The air pollution index (API) on Thursday reached 529 in Port Klang, a major shipping center, and 531 in Kuala Selangor. An API above 300 is considered hazardous and 500 triggers a state of emergency.
By Friday morning the haze had cleared slightly on the west coast, but in Kuala Lumpur the index jumped from 321 to 365, shrouding the city in a white mist reeking of wood smoke.
Meanwhile, travel agents said Malaysians and expatriates began streaming out of the capital Kuala Lumpur Friday to escape the choking haze by taking a long weekend in cleaner locations.
Families with young children were especially concerned about the effects of the haze which began closing in 10 days ago, especially after the government declared a state of emergency in two coastal towns Thursday.
Worried Europeans who had planned to return home for the northern summer once schools go on vacation in two weeks were hurriedly changing their plans, said Stephanie To from Samfo Travel.
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono responded to the tensions on Friday by pledging to take action against those responsible for the hundreds of fires raging on Sumatra, where farmers use fire to clear land.
His spokesman Dino Patti Jalal said the president told Abdullah in a phone call "that the government would do all it can and utilize local and national apparatuses to put out the forest fires."
Malaysia has conceded that Malaysian-owned palm oil and rubber plantations on Sumatra were at least partly responsible for the pollution crisis.
Environmentalists in Indonesia, however, said corruption and law enforcement problems were frustrating efforts to bring to justice plantation companies accused of causing forest fires.
They said big palm oil producers in Sumatra and Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo island, had for years used the slash-and-burn method to clear land for their plantations but little action was taken by the government to stop the practice.