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PETALING JAYA: Four military drones will be deployed next month to catch polluters from the water. Basins of the Langat rivers.
“The drones cost the state government RM2 thousand and will be used by the Selangor Water Management Authority.
“The drones will be used to monitor the sites 24 hours a day and are also equipped with night vision.
“The focus is on the Sungai Selangor and Sungai Langat river basins because they are the places where pollution occurs most frequently.
“This drone is of military standard and has features that also allow night surveillance,” Hee said at a press conference held yesterday in Sungai Gong, Rawang.
It also announced that the most severe penalties under the Selangor Water Management Authority Act 1999 would be presented for approval at the next session of the Selangor State Assembly.
“The current maximum fine for those who pollute water is RM100,000 or a prison term of no more than three years.
“We are going to increase the fine to a minimum of RM200,000 and a maximum of RM1 thousand, as well as a jail term of no more than three years,” he explained.
Whistleblowers who report any act of contamination will also be rewarded with RM20,000.
“We will protect the identity of whistleblowers,” Hee said.
Meanwhile, he said there were no illegal factories along Sungai Selangor and that the Selayang Municipal Council had also been working hard to monitor the river throughout the day.
“We are still investigating the current source of this odor contamination, which is suspected to be from a solvent.
“The state government does not rule out acts of sabotage.
“We have submitted a police report and we will await the outcome of the investigation,” he said when asked about the source of contamination.
Hee said that odor contamination was recorded at approximately one TON (odor threshold number).
The people of the Klang Valley woke up to the news of a water outage yesterday morning when one million accounts in the Klang Valley faced a water supply interruption due to alleged contamination from Sungai Selangor.
Water utility company Air Selangor said contamination was detected around 2 am yesterday, forcing phase 1, 2, 3 and Rantau Panjang water treatment plants to close.
This has resulted in unscheduled water outages in 1,292 areas in Kuala Lumpur, Petaling, Klang, Shah Alam, Kuala Selangor, Hulu Selangor, Gombak and Kuala Langat.
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