BE shocked. The Solid Waste and Public Cleansing Management Corporation (SWCorp) is establishing an armed enforcement unit, arguably the first in the world, to protect its staff from syndicates, who are preventing them from shutting down illegal dumpsites.
Factories, both legal and illegal, are hiring syndicates to dispose of their solid waste at illegal dumpsites around the country. The syndicates may even be operating the factories that do the dumping.
The money is so good that the syndicates have acquired their own fleet of garbage trucks.
In addition to trucks, vans and lorries filled to the brim with rubbish are unsightly daily scenes on our highways.
Some of the vehicles are filled to bursting with rubbish that they leave behind a trail of trash on the road, as if they were pieces of puzzles leading to crime scenes.
Inadvertance? No, these are hardcore criminals. It is likely to be a catch-me-if-you-can dare to the authorities.
It is time for the police and Road Transport Department to expand roadblocks to include garbage trucks.
But this can only be effective if our agencies talk to each other. As the saying goes, many hands make light work. Malaysian authorities only know too well that the country is no stranger to syndicates of all hues.
Money laundering, human trafficking, prostitution, migrant smuggling and others.
There is just no chance to call it an exhaustive list. And they know, too, the reasons for the ease with which they do their “business” here. Herein lies the source of the scourge.
Everything else is an ad hoc attack on the affliction, with failure written all over it.
Tackle the source and we would have come to grips with the scourge. But first —why post-hoc responses never work against criminal syndicates, regardless of their crimes.
SWCorp’s data, as disclosed by Housing and Local Government Minister Nga Kor Ming at an illegal dumpsite eradication and closure operation event in Kuala Lumpur on Dec 11, offers an explanation of why this is so.
As of October, Bernama quoted the minister as saying, 3,634 illegal dumpsites were shut down in Johor, Melaka, Negri Sembilan, Pahang, Perlis, Kedah and the Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya.
This was the highest total recorded since the Solid Waste and Public Cleansing Management Act 2007 came into force.
Are the syndicates getting away with a slap on the wrist? With 22 cases being brought to court and with fines amounting to RM385,000 imposed, one can’t be blamed to conclude so.
The solution lies in making it impossible for syndicates —be they of any crime—to begin.
Once they get a chance to grow, it is a gargantuan task to get rid of them.
And that chance to grow can only be eliminated by asking a basic question: what makes them thrive here?
© New Straits Times Press (M) Bhd
