Malaysia lifting moratorium on bauxite mining

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It was in September 2015. I was driving across the peninsula to visit Kuantan Port and a fledgling industrial park being built by Malaysia and China. As I approached the coast, I was horrified by what I saw.

Alongside the highway, land had been cleared of vegetation exposing huge swathes of red soil. A steady stream of lorries frantically rushed to and from ferrying the bauxite-laden soil, spewing up clouds of red dust that coated roads, cars, homes, lungs.

As I neared the port, the truck traffic and mess only got worse. The port people had already warned me that the area didn't look great due to the bauxite mining activity. I never expected anything as bad as this.

From green plantations to red deserts. / CGTN Photo

In 2014, Indonesia slammed the brakes on the export of raw bauxite hoping to entice companies to set up aluminum smelters to process the ore there.

The world and in particular China needed an alternative source of bauxite. And nearly overnight, the industry exploded in east coast Malaysia. At its peak, roughly when I visited, 3.5 million tonnes of the ore was being shipped out of Kuantan Port each month.

"There was a lot of illegal mining took place and everything in the name of money and profits and greed and it was such a disaster," Fuziah Salleh, a deputy minister in the prime minster's department, told me recently.

A school located in a bauxite mining area. / CGTN Photo

The formidable member of parliament for Kuantan, Fuziah had long battled on environmental issues and was horrified by what was unfolding in her area.

"Children were getting sick, we had children suffering from skin diseases, problems. Children with asthma were suffering, they were having breathing difficulties. Four children died in the abandoned mining ponds."

In 2016, amid a growing outrage after runoff from bauxite operations fouled rivers and even turned the sea red, the federal government imposed a moratorium on bauxite mining and exports.

After the sea turned red, the government acted. / Fuziah Salleh Photo

Now, the new the federal administration in which Fuziah serves as a deputy minister has announced it will lift the moratorium and look at allowing the bauxite industry to resume.

"If they restart up the bauxite mining, yes, I'm scared. I'm scared the problems will happen all over again," motorcycle mechanic Suhaizam Abdul Aziz told me.

Suhaizam runs an open-air repair shop next to a road where bauxite-laden lorries once relentlessly rumbled by.

"From my experience, we were suffering so badly from the bauxite dust. No one was enforcing the rules. My spare parts were destroyed. My business dropped to zero."

But some of his neighbors in this rural area just outside Kuantan became rich by allowing mining companies to cut down their palm oil trees and harvest the bauxite from their land instead. Big, fancy houses dotted around the villages attest to the gains some made.

Locals like Suhaizam dread a return of the mining. / CGTN Photo

"Because of 44 villagers who sold the bauxite from their land, thousands of people ended up suffering," Suhaizam says.

Salleh observes, "It became very unregulated and it become a mad rush. There was no real serious effort by the regulators, the state government, to actually enforce a system, a guideline, a procedure."

Powers in Malaysia are divided between state and federal levels. And while the federal government is vowing that proper procedures will be put in place to ensure the bauxite industry is a lot cleaner and better regulated this time round, much of the enforcement powers rest with the state government, which in this case is ruled by a different political alliance.

Fuziah says the federal government is facing a lot of pressure to resume mining, from the state, which is one of the country's poorest, and from the mining lobby as well as other powerful interests.

At its peak, the port was exporting 3.5 million tonnes a month. / CGTN Photo

There are also some locals who are also keen to see the industry restart, like village chief Mohamed Muda.

"I support resuming the mining. These projects bring profit and will help improve the economic situation of the people in the village."

But most people are dreading a repeat of the red gold rush of three years ago.

Saidi Abdul Samad took me to see the great mounds of bauxite stockpiled but never exported, the areas that were once palm oil plantation but now looked like the surface of Mars, the schools next to roads once bumper to bumper with bauxite lorries.

Parts of the area resembled the surface of Mars. / CGTN Photo

Every day, Saidi used to form a one-man blockade, halting all the lorries to allow parents to take their kids to school and people to head to work in the city. But inevitably, the traffic and noise and dust and pollution would resume.

People here are praying they never see a return to those days again. And the authorities, miners and the transporters can be sure that people like Saidi and MP Fuziah won't sit silently if they do.