It ain't over till the Fat Indon Lady stops choking, so keep those masks handy for the hazy days..or start stocking up, we just never know..!
Published: Saturday June 29, 2013 MYT 12:00:00 AM
PETALING JAYA: Although the haze seemed to have cleared up, the fight against land clearing and peatland fires is not over, said the chief of an environment organisation.
Global Environment Centre director Faizah Parish expects the haze to worsen as the current drought continues until September.
“The main source of the haze are large scale forest and peatland fires in Riau, Indonesia, and to a lesser extent, Selangor.
“The fires are ongoing but at the moment, the winds are not blowing directly to Malaysia. But we anticipate the haze to be back in a few weeks,” he said here yesterday.
Faizah stressed that to stop the haze, “we have to stop the fires”.
He urged Malaysians and the Government to help by patrolling regularly, especially in Selangor, where there were regular peatland fires and report any land clearing activity.
He added that the non-governmental movement had launched the Stop the Haze Campaign.
“We need 30 to 40 volunteers to patrol certain areas of Selangor that had incidents of peatland fires.
“We hope the volunteers are from areas near the locations such as Raja Musa Forest Reserve, KLIA, and Johan Setia in Klang,” he said.
He added that they also needed about 20 volunteers to spread awareness on how haze occurs and how to prevent it.
Faizah hopes the public and Government would contribute funds to the organisation to help with the patrolling of fire-prone peatlands as well as purchase of equipment and supplies to support community fire prevention and control teams.
“The funds will also go to monitoring activities of forest and oil palm plantations and promoting zero burning,” he said.
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