National Environment Day 2020: Ministry focuses on ‘Environment a Shared Responsibility’

KUALA LUMPUR: The Ministry of Environment and Water (Mewa) is focusing on four main programmes in conjunction with National Environment Day 2020 yesterday, themed ‘Environment a Shared Responsibility’.

Minister Datuk Seri Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man said the programmes include river conservation through the National River Trail (NRT) programme, Electrical and Electronic Waste (e-waste) Collection Campaign, Avoid Single-Use Plastic Campaign and greening the earth and tree planting.

“I will officiate the Pengkalan Datu River Trail in Kubang Krian tomorrow (October 24). The trail will begin behind Universiti Sains Malaysia Hospital and end around Min House Camp, Kubang Kerian. The trail is one of the pioneer projects under the NRT programme.

“The second programme conducted during this year’s National Environment Day is the campaign of collecting e-waste. One such campaign that was launched on Sept 23 managed to collect 130,000 kg of e-waste from all over the country and the number is expected to keep rising,” he said in a speech at the launch of the National Environment Day in Kota Bharu, Kelantan, yesterday.

The speech text was read out by his deputy, Datuk Dr Ahmad Masrizal Muhammad.

The NRT programme has targetted a total of 10,000 kilometres of trails to be built by 2030 throughout the country to encourage local communities and other parties to ensure rivers in Malaysia are protected from pollution.

For the e-waste Campaign, Mewa through the Department of Environment, is suggesting that every last Saturday of each month be designated as e-waste collection day throughout the country beginning January next year.

Meanwhile, the MEXCOE Bil. 2/2020 meeting that was conducted via virtual meeting today presented four papers, including the closure of illegal factories with the cooperation of state governments and the NRT programme towards river conservation.

A statement issued by MEWA said that the papers were presented to ensure that pollution issues, especially rivers would be dealt with comprehensively.

“Cooperation between the Minister and the executive councillor in charge of environment in each state is important to ensure that environmental pollution prevention is increased and enhanced through the cooperation between state governments, local authorities and Federal agencies.

“The water pollution incidents that happened at Sungai Semenyih and Sungai Selangor recently had caused water supply disruption to the population of Klang Valley, Kuala Langat and other areas,” it said.