The Star 23 Oct 15;
GEORGE TOWN: All bicycle commuters and recreational cyclists in Penang are advised to stop cycling until the haze blows away.
“Don’t ride for now. When you are pedalling, you are breathing fast and the mucous lining in your throat and nose will not be able to help catch the smoke particles,” said G Club Penang Cyclists chairman Datuk Dr Lim Seh Guan.
Dr Lim, a ear, nose and throat surgeon, said the club had told its network of about 10,000 cyclists to call off all rides.
“If we exert ourselves and breathe fast, the particles will enter our lungs.
“I cannot envision when the particles will be able to come out after that and I am worried about possible carcinogenic elements in the particles too.
“I urge everyone to avoid any strenuous physical activity and wear good quality masks,” he said.
At 3am yesterday, the air pollutant index (API) in Penang hit 236 at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), up from 104 on Tuesday. By 10am, the reading at the USM monitoring station had risen to 248.
On the mainland at 10am yesterday, the monitoring station in Seberang Jaya clocked a reading of 287 and at Prai, the reading was 197.
A reading of 201 to 300 is considered very unhealthy.
USM cancelled all its activities including lectures and exams in Gelugor and its branch campuses in Bertam and Nibong Tebal starting yesterday.
This order extends to outsiders who have events planned within these campuses, said USM registrar Siti Zubaidah A. Hamid in a statement yesterday morning.
Indoor activities such as lectures, exams and laboratory work are postponed until further notice.
This weekend’s 25th USM Inter-national Netball Festival is also postponed.
Meanwhile, a check with a local pharmacy showed that the retail prices of face masks remained the same even though suppliers had increased wholesale prices by RM1 to RM1.50.
A pharmacist who wished to be known only as Lee said three-ply surgical masks at four pieces per pack were still selling at RM2.
Smog gets in their eyes
The Star 23 Oct 15;
THICK haze shrouded Penang Hill yesterday. The imposing peak had vanished from sight.
I could not see the iconic Kek Lok Si Temple and its towering Goddess of Mercy statue either, from the balcony of my condominium unit in Bandar Baru Air Itam.
A check at the Education Ministry website did not indicate that schools in Penang would be closed due to the smog.
Before sending my daughter to school for the afternoon session on Wednesday, I checked the website and the social media again to see whether there was any last-minute announcement of school closure.
In the car, my wife grumbled that schools in other states were closed occasionally, but it had only been done twice in Penang.
“The haze is so bad today, with a burning smell. Something must be wrong with the Air Pollution Index reading,” she fumed.
A day earlier, she had posted a suggestion on the Ministry website, that schools in Penang be closed for health reasons.
As we reached Convent Light Street at 1.05pm, the Rela guard came up to the car and made some hand gestures. We were then told the school was closed.
It was a shock. We couldn’t believe this was happening in the era of social media, where information is disseminated in a jiffy. Why were we informed at the last minute?
This was the question asked by thousands of other parents who have school-going children in the afternoon session.
If the state Education Department had made the announcement at 11am, then many with a smartphone would have known about the closure in, say, 30 minutes.
The media would have announced it in their online reports. The message would have gone viral with parents forwarding it to others.
It is worse for parents who send their children to school by school van or bus. Many pupils were already in school when the announcement was made about 1pm.
Some kids were lucky as their parents or relatives came to pick them up later. But some parents who were working were unable to do so.
Their children were kept in school till evening but there were no lessons. Pity the teachers, since many of them could not go back home as they had to keep an eye on the kids.
Parents of the 95 affected schools in Penang are seething with anger.
To be fair, it would not have been easy for the state Education director, Shaari Osman, to make a decision on school closure as he probably had to follow standard operating procedure, including getting approval from the ministry.
He was quoted in The Star as saying that he decided at about 11.30am to suspend the afternoon session when the API neared 150. The department then began faxing out the directive to schools.
At my daughter’s school, the announcement was made via the public address system at 12.45pm. Teachers also went around to inform parents who were still in the school compound.
The media only knew about the closure when irate parents began calling them.
Pity the canteen operators too. They would have prepared much food, only to see it wasted. Who is going to compensate them?
Parents are hoping the department would take some lessons from this episode. There should not be a recurrence.
23 areas still show unhealthy API readings
AWAINA ARBEE New Straits Times 23 Oct 15;
KUALA LUMPUR: As of 2pm today, 23 areas still record unhealthy Air Pollutant Index (API) readings, while 28 registered moderate levels.
Noon readings had shown unhealthy levels for Indera Mahkota, Kuantan, but dipped to moderate level at 2pm.
At the same time, Shah Alam reached unhealthy levels at 105 and Batu Muda, Kuala Lumpur (101).
Other areas with unhealthy API were Kedah, Kelantan, Pahang, Perak, Perlis, Pulau Pinang, Sarawak, Selangor and Terengganu.
Schools in areas with unhealthy API must close
TASNIM LOKMAN New Straits Times 23 Oct 15;
KUALA LUMPUR: Government and government assisted schools in areas affected by a school closure directive must close, the Education Ministry said in a statement.
Discretion is, however, given to private schools registered with the ministry. Government and government assisted schools in areas not affected by a directive close can use their autonomy to decide what is best for their students based on ministry guidelines.
The ministry said state departments, school districts offices and also the school management across the country must continuously monitor Air Pollutant Index readings issued from time to time by the authorities.
In the event of an increase in API reading to unhealthy and very unhealthy, the ministry said the concerned party may take action at their respective levels, in line with the ministry’s guidelines.
The true cost of Malaysia haze
Stephanie Scawen Al Jazeera Yahoo News 23 Oct 15;
The choking haze which has persisted over Malaysia and Singapore for the past two months has so far cost the economies of both countries hundreds of millions of dollars, according to analyst estimations, yet the true cost is impossible to calculate until the skies finally clear.
Professor Euston Quah, from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, warned that the crisis could have a greater impact than the three-month long 1997 haze crisis, which caused an estimated $9bn in losses in economic activity across Southeast Asia.
“The pollution standards index readings [on the Malay peninsula] thus far [in 2015] have been almost as high as that of 1997. This tells me that together with the duration, the 2015 haze damages can be expected to be higher,” Quah told Al Jazeera.
The total economic cost will take months to assess, and will have to cover all aspects of daily life – lost productivity, lost tourism and lost workdays through respiratory illness, as well as higher prices for fresh food products.
Meanwhile, the smoke from Indonesian forest fires permeates all walks of life on the Malay peninsula today. Schools have closed, flights are being cancelled and sea traffic through the Malacca Strait, one the world’s busiest shipping lanes, has been delayed because of poor visibility.
Promises to extinguish the fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan, Indonesia, have had little impact to date. Some experts predict that unless persistent rain falls soon, the smog could last until the New Year.
Short tempers
The longer the haze has continued, the shorter the tempers in Singapore and Malaysia have become over the apparent inability to stop the fires from being started in the first place.
Singapore’s National Environment Agency (NEA) began legal proceedings under its Transboundary Haze Pollution Act (THPA) against five Indonesian companies in September and a sixth this month, all of whom are believed in part to be behind the haze.
The Preventative Measures Notice serves as a kind of “cease and desist” request and asks offending companies to present plans to the NEA on how the companies plan to extinguish fires and a promise not to start any new ones.
The act is unique in that it can fine offenders - Singaporean or foreign - around $70,000 for each day they contribute to hazardous levels of haze.
Malaysia’s government is drafting similar legislation but questions remain if the fines are large enough to act as a deterrent.
Across the 10-strong Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN) region, the Transboundary Haze Pollution Agreement has been in existence since 2002. It seeks to mitigate the effects of the haze, but Indonesia – the source of the majority of fires – only ratified the agreement last year and was the last ASEAN nation to do so.
Consumers in Singapore are trying an informal boycott on the country, aiming to hurt perpetrators where it hurts most: the bottom line.
Consumer power
“The call for consumers to stop buying products from companies involved in purchasing or sourcing wood based products that cause the haze will pressure companies to be more responsible in [their] buying or sourcing from sustainable sources,” Indrani Thuraisingham, from Consumers International in Malaysia, told Al Jazeera.
“Consumers will send a strong signal through their purchasing power to companies which contribute to this environmental disaster year after year.”
But Quah, from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, does not believe boycotts will help fight the fires.
He told Al Jazeera that while he was not against such action, its impact would be limited.
“It is futile to ban products simply because one has to clearly identify those plantations who have committed the act of clearing land by fires versus those that had not.”
Quah said there was a danger of penalizing producers who used palm oil products in their goods when they either had no knowledge of starting fires or were complicit in haze-causing practices.
“There are just too [many] products which have palm oil as one of the ingredients and how do we know for certain which plantations are 'bad' and which are 'good'”?
While haze has been an annual problem for decades, the severity of this year’s smog is being blamed by experts on the El Nino phenomenon, which brings drought and drier weather than normal to South East Asia.
