COMMENT  The anti incinerator group Kuala Lumpur Tak Nak Incinerator (KTI) is due to meet Urban Wellbeing, Housing and Local Development Minister Abdul Rahman Dahlan today.

Yet, the begging question is, does the minister have anything to offer the group?

The minister has repeatedly refused to back away from building the 1,000-tonne waste incinerator, worth about RM800 million, smack in their Kuala Lumpur neighbourhood.

Rahman (right) has been adamant that this is the only solution to Kuala Lumpur’s allegedly mounting garbage woes.
 
The ministry even engaged academician-led NGOs to offer free trips to Japan to win the residents over.
 
On top of that, insider information is that the ministry had shortlisted the tenders for the incinerator to two - from an initial 33 - mostly Japanese companies.

Despite promises from the ministry officials that the incinerator plans are still very much in the planning stage, the plan is being pushed through faster than they thought, said KTI.

However, KTI said, this is despite the detailed environment impact assessment (DEIA) report yet to be completed.
 
From compacting to burning
 
The proposed site for the incinerator in Taman Beringin is at the present site of a waste transfer station that handles a total of 2,400 tonnes of waste daily, above its 1,700 tonne capacity.
 
KTI said Kepong residents have put up with the waste transfer station's stink and pollution for 15 years now.

However their situation is headed for worse - taking its place is now an incinerator that they claim would be emitting poisonous gases from the burning of hundreds of tonnes of garbage.

They said it is a disaster in the making - the fact that a giant burning facility will be built between a petrol station and a methane-leaking landfill right next to the site.

The KTI members, comprising residents from high security bungalow housing areas to low-cost flats, are 100 percent opposed to the incinerator.

For them, putting up with the present waste transfer station has already been too much, with nauseating smells from the garbage completely invading their closed homes in the middle of the night.

On top of that, they fear for the decrease in their property value, which fell 15 years ago when the authorities gazetted the entire area situated in northern KL as a waste transfer site.
 
Over their dead bodies
 
Last July KTI chairperson Isaiah Jacob declared the incinerator will only be built "over our dead bodies".

"The minister has not been brave enough to meet us. He has been lying to us through his officials. The incinerators will only be built over our dead bodies."

Jacob said the group sent many letters to the minister last year, urging him to meet them, but Rahman Dahlan never responded.
 
Instead, KTI claimed, officers from the ministry were sent to meet them, and these officers only "conveyed to us the minister's lies".
 
For KTI and the residents, Rahman has offered no alternative, for he had snubbed the group many a times and even called them troublemakers.

Unlike the anti-Lynas movement that opposed the building of the Australian rare earths plant in Pahang, KTI comprises residents from the surrounding areas, who have yet to take on the minister in a much more forceful way other than dialogue.

They have used all the peaceful avenues, yet the minister has openly stated that the incinerator project will proceed.

This is despite there being a binding contract between the ministry and Berjaya Corporation's 1,700-acre sanitary landfill in Bukit Tagar, which is to house wastes from the whole of Klang Valley.

Berjaya has insisted that Bukit Tagar has an approximately 120 million tonnes capacity and can cater to disposing the total waste generated in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor (of around 5,000 tonnes a day) for over 65 years.

"Currently, Bukit Tagar only manages Kuala Lumpur's 2,500 tonnes of waste per day and at this level, the Bukit Tagar sanitary landfill can last for over 130 years," Berjaya head Vincent Tan was reported to have said.

Minister Rahman has also been alleged to have bypassed the landfill owners and got the partner of the landfill to sign in with him on the incinerator.

Despite the hurdles, KTI representatives will meet Rahman today, hoping he may just change his mind.

The fact remains that in a deal worth millions of ringgit, it is unlikely that the minister is going to give in to the people, who have nothing to offer the ministry in return - apart from gratitude.
 
 
ZAKIAH KOYA is a member of Team Malaysiakini.