JB City Councillor slams SWM for inefficiencies

SWM Environment Sdn. Bhd. (SWM) was slammed for failing to carry out its solid waste collection contractual obligations satisfactorily.

Johor Bahru city councillor, Yahya Jaafar ticked off SWM for not performing its cleaning and solid waste collection as scheduled.

He quoted an incident in Majidee zone area where the wastes in that area were left piling up for two weeks at one time.

Residents in the said area and other areas within the city are certainly not happy and satisfied with the state of affairs of uncollected rubbish and waste incidences where they are forced to put up with the unpleasant sight and the nauseating stench.

Some residents have even resorted to open burning their wastes when the stench get unbearable.

Maimunah Muda, 58, who has been staying in the Kampong Melayu Majidee over the last 23 years said that wastes in her area are collected once in every five days instead of alternate day.

“It has been like that for the last two months and making our surroundings filthy and smelly”, she added.

Another resident, Fatimah Hussein, 60, said that she has to resort to burning the wastes as the waste bin has overflowed and waste stench gets unbearable .

Councillor Yahya said, he had reports stating that SWM rubbish trucks are having difficulties obtaining PUSPAKOM road worthiness certifications where eight out of ten trucks sent for inspections failed the tests.

He urged the state government to take necessary to resolve the problem and also look into the options of appointing more than one concessionaire in managing the city cleaning and solid waste collection services.

Meanwhile, SWM corporate communication officer, Shahrul Amir Abdul Rahman said that SWM did received complaints of uncollected solid wastes from residents in Kampong Melayu Majidee three days ago.

He admitted that fact that at times SWM do encounter problems of waste dump trucks breaking down but nonetheless SWM has always managed to send back-up trucks and teams to cover the affected areas.

“The public can lodge a complaint with SWM if the wastes in their area are not collected after three days”. he said when contacted by reporter.

Footnotes:

SWM ENVIRONMENT SDN. BHD. (SWM), formerly known as Southern Waste Management Sdn Bhd was established in line with the Malaysian Government’s decision on the National Privatization of Solid Waste Management.

It was subsequently awarded the task of managing the storage, collection, transfer, haulage, intermediate processing and disposal of solid waste in the Southern Region of Peninsular Malaysia by the Economic Planning Unit of the Prime Minister’s Department on December 21, 1995.

In April 1996, SWM was directed by the Government of Malaysia to take over the solid waste management and public cleansing services from all Local Authorities within the SWM concession area (Johor, Melaka and Negeri Sembilan) on an interim basis.

SWM had progressively since 1997 taken over the management of solid waste and public cleansing from all the Local Authorities within its concession area.

It is a transition toward the implementation of the full privatization.

The concession will cover a period of 20 years and serve a population of 4 million people.