Malaysia is preparing to ship back nearly 12,000 tonnes of toxic industrial waste to Taiwan which entered the country illegally, a senior official said yesterday.
"We welcome Taiwan's decision to take back the toxic waste. But we have not been officially notified," Department of Environment director-general Rosnani Ibarahim told reporters.
Rosnani said Malaysia was a party to the Basel Convention and hence it was required to ensure that the waste was shipped back to its source.
"But we are concerned about the risk involved during trans-boundary movement of the waste. We are trying to communicate with Taiwan's Environmental Protection Administration [EPA] to find a solution," she said.
On Monday, Taiwan said it was prepared take back the toxic industrial waste exported to Malaysia after the environmental authorities found that the import license for the shipment was forged.
The EPA received a tip-off in January that a Taipei-based group had been exporting the waste to its Malaysian partner with a fake Malaysian import license, an EPA official said.
false license
The Malaysian government confirmed that the license provided by the company was false and the EPA immediately called a halt to the export, EPA Solid Waste Control Bureau chief Chen Hsiung-wen (陳雄文) told reporters.
The company, Hung-Yiu Technology of Environmental Protection Co, had already transported 11,879 tonnes of the waste, which contains high levels of heavy metals, to Malaysia, he said.
Hung-Yiu general manager Cheng Tung-ko (
Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar, a lawmaker from the southern Johor state, was critical of the company for bringing in the waste.
"I think we should not be bringing in anything that will endanger our environment from other countries. We have enough of our own toxic waste that we want to handle," he told reporters.
Rosnani said the solid industrial waste was being stored in a factory in the Johor town of Labis.
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