SHAH ALAM, 15 Jan: Operations of the Sungai Semenyih Water Treatment Plant which was paused due to pollution of the river was reopened last night.
The treatment plant which was managed by plant operator, Abass Consortium, has to halt its operations around 1.30 pm yesterday because there was palm oil contamination.
Among the areas that experiences outages due to the measures taken to pause the plant operations are Subang, Puchong and Seri Kembangan.
Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim informed that the cleanup of the oil was immediately carried out by the State Government.
“After six hours of discontinued operations, it is now operating normally at eight o’clock last night. We did it as quickly as possible for fear of the impact to consumers,” he said in a media conference after officiating the Monthly Civil Servants Assembly.
Abdul Khalid explained that the proactive measures taken by the State Government proves that the State Government is no longer dependant on the Selangor Water Supply Company (Syabas – Syarikat Bekalan Air Selangor).
“The State Government can do it, we want to clear the status although the Federal Government has yet to give us the power to take over.
“This is because we want this issue to be explained professionally, because of that the State Government bought an ad in newspapers to explain the status of this water issue,” he said.
In the meantime, he said that the State Government is still awaiting response from the Federal Government regarding the issue of the acquisition of water from Syabas.
“We are still awaiting response from the Federal Government because the Federal Government has a ‘golden share’ in the company,” he said.
The Minister of Energy, Green Technology and Water, Datuk Seri Peter Chin Fah Kui in his previous statement said that the Federal Government has never stopped the State Government in taking over the water concession company because the Federal Government does not have any equity in Syabas except for the ‘golden share’ for monitoring purposes.