KOTA KINABALU – The sole company licensed to dispose of all of Sabah’s clinical waste has been served with five compounds on numerous environmental violations but has been unable to resolve the issue.
State Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Jafry Ariffin said the Department of Environment (DoE) had slapped five compounds on Sedafiat Sdn Bhd on October 27 and noted that, despite the state government’s facilitation, the company failed to show their commitment thereafter.
“Previously, DoE has given its best to facilitate Sedafiat since the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic by giving them special allowances to dispose of the waste.
“However, following evaluation up to this point, the company did not provide any commitment as a special concessionaire in terms of making proposals and advice to end the issue,” he said.
Sedafiat is the sole concessionaire licensed by the Health Ministry and the DoE to treat and dispose of clinical waste in Sabah.
They are also the operators of the medical waste incinerator at the hospitals in Tawau and Labuan.
The company also owns a medical waste incinerator which treats up to six metric tonnes of waste a day before the residue is sent to Kualiti Alam in Negeri Sembilan for final disposal.
Jafry said Sedafiat receives up to nine metric tonnes of clinical waste daily and this has overloaded the capacity of the company’s facility.
As of November 7, the backlog of clinical wastes at the company’s plant in Lok Kawi stood at 695,278.75kg.
Jafry said on July 30, DoE had authorised for the medical waste, medical waste ash and its residue to be temporarily kept at a Sepanggar Industrial Estate storage area, following the overwhelming load of medical waste piling at the Sedafiat facility in Lok Kawi due to the spike in coronavirus cases in the state.
As the DoE is now closely monitoring clearing works at their facility in Lok Kawi since November 10, Jafry said Sedafiat had been issued several notices before they were fined under Regulation 9 of the Environmental Quality Act for amassing the clinical waste outside of their facility.
The DoE, he said, found some of the responses by Sedafiat to the notices issued as unsatisfactory.
A discussion held between Sedafiat and the DoE over the notices revealed that the export of medical waste had been delayed to this month from October, he said.
“Based on the export schedule, the amount of clinical waste sent by the shipping firm Trienekens to Sarawak was only 150 metric tonnes between October this year until February next year, this is only a small amount, compared to the backlog of clinical waste that are piling up, here,” he said.
Previously, Jafry said Sedafiat had informed DoE that the shipping firm assigned to send all the clinical wastes, Trienekens, had refused to load the clinical waste containers from Sabah.
“But this was against the statement issued by Trienekens. Instead Trienekens noted that it was Bintulu Port Authorities which had declined to transit the wastes from the Bintulu Port.
“However, a response from Bintulu Port Authorities on September 28 noted this was no longer an issue,” he said.
Jafry said the latest feedback from Sedafiat revealed that the total of 772 metric tonnes of clinical waste at their Lok Kawi facility had been sent to the temporary storage unit in Sepanggar.
At the same time, he said the export schedule of the waste to Trienekens in Sarawak is now reduced to 30 metric tonnes a month, pending the arrival of a new mobile incinerator from China which can burn up to 10 metric tonnes a day.
“The mobile incinerators are on the way to Sabah and are expected to arrive in the third week of November,” he said, adding that the existing two mobile incinerators the company owned are broken.
Sedafiat is also facing a shortage of storage containers and the firm is now applying for temporary permission to store the clinical wastes inside jumbo bags at the temporary storage facilities in Sepanggar.
The Vibes on Saturday reported that piles of clinical waste have been laid out in the open at the company’s premises for months – a year after the state government ordered their safe disposal. – The Vibes, November 15, 2021
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