JOHOR BARU, MALAYSIA - After millions of ringgit spent in the past one year to rehabilitate Sungai Skudai and its tributaries, the river is still a filthy dump - literally.
Sungai Skudai, along with Sungai Segget and Sungai Tebrau, were part of a RM900 million (S$369 million) river rehabilitation programme announced last year.
But the river's water is still teh tarik-coloured and rafts of rubbish are still floating in Sungai Skudai.
Residents who depend on the river for their living, have questioned whether the project had actually taken off.
Orang Asli of the Seletar tribe at Kampung Bakar Batu Danga feel the river had actually worsened in the past year, especially with development projects being carried out at the river.
Fisherman Udi Ki, 35, was cynical when asked about the condition of Sungai Danga, a major tributary of Sungai Skudai.
He said the only "improvement" was that now Orang Asli children collect plastic bottles and other scrap, instead of fish, from the river to be sold.
"We can't even cast our fishing nets now because all sorts of rubbish gets tangled in it."
He also pointed to a gaping gash on a nearby riverbank, where a bridge was being built as part of the Johor Baru-Nusajaya coastal highway project -- an example of development projects being carried out at the river.
"Red earth is allowed to crumble into the river and when it rains the water looks like a frothing river of teh tarik," he said.
Another villager Suni Jenol, 35, said they had seen rubbish traps installed at several locations along the river but the trapped rubbish was never collected.
He said the rubbish would break free once the traps were full.
Suni added that the villagers' outboard boat engines were frequently damaged when the propeller hit submerged debris in the river.
"The rubbish-filled water had not only wiped out the marine life in the river but has also 'strangled' our outboard engines," he said.
The flow of rubbish at the river has not gone unnoticed by Menteri Besar Datuk Abdul Ghani Othman.
In a statement available at the state government website (http://www.johordt.gov.my), he said that 41,000 tonnes of rubbish ran through Sungai Skudai annually.
The statement also mentioned that RM90 million was allocated to tackle Sungai Skudai's solid waste problem.
It was learnt that a contract to clean up the river was given out by the Iskandar Regional Development Authority earlier this year but the contractor had run into some problems. - NST
No comments:
Post a Comment