JOHOR BARU: The Environment and Water Ministry will not compromise with any quarters found to be polluting the environment and would use strict laws against them.

       Minister Datuk Seri Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man acknowledged that pollution cases being reported around Johor Baru were many including at Sungai Kim Kim, which happened some two years ago.

       “The state Department of Environment (DOE) has identified the cause of the pollution and is conducting further investigations at the suspected premises, which is a lorry storage premise.

       “Authorities have arrested nine suspects including the premise owner and his workers to help with the investigations under Section 34B of the Environmental Quality Act 1974,” he said when met after visiting the scene at Kampung Baru Sri Aman near Kempas here on Wednesday (Sept 15).

       Tuan Ibrahim added that several companies have been using the premises to park their lorries, which have been operating for a long period of time.

       He said investigations at the premises found evidence of waste being dumped into the river where the suspects allegedly used pipes to channel the waste from the lorries and into the river.

       “We believed they have been doing this for a long time, where they usually wait for the rain to pollute the river with oily substance, which usually goes downstream.

       “Maybe, this time around the volume is too much as we see some oil slugs at branches along the riverbank at the premise,” he added.

       Tuan Ibrahim also said the DOE has collected nine samples from the polluted river and would send them for analysis at the Chemistry Department, where the result would come out in a week’s time.

       “We will be monitoring companies that have licenses from the DOE to carry out scheduled waste to make sure they do not take any shortcuts to throw their waste away,” he added.