Hazy Direction

ARCHIVES 2013

By admin-s On Jun 24, 2013

Singapore went proactive once PSI hit 400. We took 3 hours and 29 minutes after it hit 746 in Muar. That is worse than being bloody reactive!

Sea Demon

At 7am on Sunday, 23rd June 2013, the Air Pollution Index (or Pollution Standards Index) in the coastal town of Muar, Johor, hit 716. For those without idea of what that means, let me provide you with some notes:

It clearly states that a state of emergency will be declared the moment the API exceeds 500 points. Guess when did the Minister finally declared emergency in Muar?

That was 3 hours and 29 minutes later.

Painfully slow.

Now that emergency has been declared, what are the residents of Muar supposed to do? I quickly went into the Department of Environment’s website and found nothing on what are people supposed to do once emergency has been declared.

I went into the Ministry of Health’s website, there was just an info page on how to deal with the haze conditions, but of course I don’t expect them to come up with a plan because the emergency was declared by the Minister of Natural Resources and Environment.

I guess the government has yet to learn the lessons of Ops Daulat etc. Obviously the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment has failed in both Risk Management and Crisis Management. In the Risk Management aspect, there should have been a Haze Risk Management Committee set-up and a Risk Assessment done by this committee that involves the Department of Environment, the Meteorological Department, Remote Sensing to determine the hotspots, wind directions, weather and wind patterns on a strategic (long-term) level.