Yang di-Pertuan Agong al-Sultan Abdullah Ahmad Shah, today decreed for the government to conduct a detailed study to reduce and address the flood risks.
His Majesty said that short and long-term solutions, such as flood mitigation projects and efforts to deepen shallow rivers, are necessary due to frequent flooding.
“We can think about the cost (to implement the project to address flood problems) later, but we have to find the cause as there are always floods occurring, every year, every month.
“This is also subject to small rivers and drains in the city, which are not well maintained… all kinds of garbage thrown arbitrarily, which may be the cause of the flooding,” said His Majesty.
Sultan Abdullah said this while visiting and presenting donations to flood victims, at the Kampung Baru Sungai Chedong temporary relief centre today.
He was accompanied by Raja Permaisuri Agong Tunku Azizah Aminah, and their son, Tengku Amir Nasser Ibrahim Shah.
… The floods hit Pahang on Wednesday, as a result of continuous heavy rain, causing the river water level to overflow in Raub, Jerantut, Maran, Pekan, Bera, Temerloh and Rompin districts.
It is extremely sad that this Agong, from a state where the royal family has been behind so much of the recent desecration of the forests, is under the impression that the causes of flooding are not already well known. Or that they might be due to common garbage.
Whoever failed to educate him on the matter is plainly at fault, because even back half a century ago it was very well known that above all it is careless logging that creates erosion that creates floods.
Excess logging and unsustainable monoculture also wipes out nature entirely and much of the once tropical lush land-bank of Malaysia is now in danger of ending up much like the sandy wastelands of the Gulf and Middle East, host to the earliest ‘civilisations’ where lust for wealth and unsustainable farming practices destroyed the ‘Garden of Eden’ over thousands of years.
With today’s technologies we can achieve the same effect in a decade.
So, might the Agong agree to put a moratorium on the logging in his state and encourage similar moratoriums elsewhere whilst he gets up to speed on these matters, because it would probably represent the country’s last chance to rescue the future of Malaysia’s flora and fauna – including its national emblem, the beleaguered and starving tiger population now reduced to around a hundred desperate sick animals in the wild?
That way he could go down in history as the man who saved his country rather than ruining it.