NST Leader: E-waste land

New Straits Times

21-06-2025

MALAYSIA doesn't want to be an e-waste garbage bin for the world, but it just can't help being one. Year after year, an estimated one thousand containers make it past our seaports. Some through our porous land and maritime borders.
The Customs Department tells us that importers — or are they smugglers? — are bringing in the containers by falsely declaring them to contain anything but e-waste.
Some containers don't make it through the inspection of the department, but many do. How many is anyone's guess.
The hundreds of illegal e-waste factories throughout the country give a picture of the number of containers that made it undetected. Some are hidden in plantations; others operate openly, in plain sight, visible to the eyes of the authorities.
The most recent raids from June 16 to June 19 by 12 agencies on 57 premises in a nationwide crackdown show how bad a crisis the illegal e-waste smuggling is.
The police, which led the raids in collaboration with the Department of Environment and Inland Revenue Board, estimated the seizures and revenue loss to the government to be RM1.003 billion.
The 57 raided premises were almost a national affair, with 16 in Selangor, 12 in Sabah, six each in Kedah and Sarawak, five each in Perak and Johor, four in Penang, two in Kelantan and one in Terengganu.
The raids also yielded 453 arrests, with only 41 Malaysians being nabbed. The rest were from the usual suspects: China, Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Pakistan and Nepal.
From Jan 1 last year to June 19, the police arrested 1,061 people. This should frighten the nation into action before the crisis becomes a catastrophe.
But the authorities appear to be facing, not insurmountable, but surmountable hurdles. One such revealed itself when the crackdown was launched.
Although police intelligence revealed that more than 57 premises were operating illegally, many were found closed on the day of the raids.
This, according to Federal Internal Security and Public Order Department director Datuk Seri Azmi Abu Kassim, raises concerns as to whether some operators may have been tipped off, the New Straits Times quoted him as saying.
Enemies within aren't new threats for enforcement units. But which of the 12 agencies leaked it would be something for the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission to uncover.
Punishment not matching the crime is another hurdle. Consider the Customs Act 1967. Anyone making false declarations can be fined up to RM500,000 or imprisoned for up to seven years, or both.
A fine of RM500,000 is just a trifling sum for smugglers. Be that as it may, how many "importers" have been slapped with a RM500,000 fine or a seven-year imprisonment? As unheard of as hen's teeth.
The Customs Department must do better by convincing the court to impose the maximum of punishment because illegal e-waste smuggling is a national crisis.
While the government must provide the enforcers and regulators with the necessary resources to do a good job, they, too, have to go on an internal journey to weed out corrupt officers. Robust enforcement is not possible any other way.
Absent this, containers of illegal e-waste will keep arriving on our shores, turning the crisis into a meltdown.