June 30, 2018. That’s the new deadline until which the current moratorium on all bauxite mining in Pahang will remain in place. The federal government has decided to extend the ban, which first came into effect in January 2016 and was due to expire on December 31 this year. The…

First came evidence that despite a year and a half-long moratorium on all bauxite mining in Pahang exports of the iron ore has been rising steadily for months. Now comes some welcome action by local authorities. To wit: the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) has arrested a senior Customs officer and…

Since January last year all mining of bauxite in Pahang has been banned. So how come bauxite exports from the state have increased significantly? Yet increased they have, according to data on bauxite imports from China, which is the final destination of all the bauxite mined in Malaysia. And it…

People in Pahang can now breathe a sigh of relief. It’s official: the country’s federal government has extended the ban on all bauxite mining in the state for another three months. Certainly a welcome development, this. The moratorium was put in place in January last year and has since been extended and re-extended repeatedly….

Another three months. That’s how long Malaysia’s government may extend the moratorium on bauxite mining in Pahang. A good thing, too, all things considered. The ban has been in place, through repeated extensions, since January 15 last year and is due to expire at the end of this month. The cause…

A ban on all bauxite mining remains in place in Pahang, but that may not have stopped some operators from trying to resume their mining activities clandestinely. Villagers have drawn that conclusion after discovering two excavators in the village of Kampung Jeram. The local contractor reportedly said he had obtained a permit to…

The moratorium on bauxite mining in Pahang has been extended, extended again and then extended yet again since last January, when it was first imposed initially. Now, in a move that should please environmentalists and long-suffering Pahang locals alike, the government has decided to extend the ban yet again, for another…

There has been a moratorium on bauxite mining in Pahang for almost a year, but that has not stopped some fly-by-night operators from continuing to extract the aluminum ore on the sly. So says Natural Resources and Environment Minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar. He has pointed at the mounds of bauxite…

The moratorium on bauxite mining remains firmly in place in Pahang. So far so good. The ban, however, may not be being enforced locally to the degree it should be. Locals are reporting that some miners have been transporting bauxite ore illegally and surreptitiously, using back roads. They may also…

Bauxite mining has been banned in Pahang since January. The moratorium on all mining activities will stay in place until at least the end of the year – and possibly much longer. The damage, however, has already been done. Some local residents have been suffering from a variety of ailments,…

The bauxite mining ban in Pahang could be extended well into 2017 or even 2018. The reason: stockpiles of the aluminum ore have yet to be cleared in Kuantan despite repeated pledges over the past months by local mining operators to ship their stockpiles away before the latest deadline expires…

The moratorium on bauxite mining in Pahang has been extended again, for the third time, until the end of the year. The ban, which was scheduled to expire on September 14, has been extended by the federal government because local operators have still not managed to clear up existing stockpiles…

First came a three-month ban, imposed in mid-January, on bauxite mining in Pahang. Then in mid-April came another three-month extension to the ban. Now comes another two-month extension to the three-month extension, expanding the ban until September 15. And a good thing too, all things considered. The moratorium on bauxite…

Come June 15, bauxite mining will resume in Pahang. Or maybe not. The federal government is mulling extending the temporary ban further still to allow more time for operators and state officials to comply with more rigorous rules and regulations. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) that are being currently designed and…

A basic principle of economics is supply and demand. When there is demand for a product, someone will be willing to supply it. At what cost to the environment that demand is met, however, is another matter altogether. And so it has proved with the mining of bauxite in Pahang….

Cultivating banana trees, oil palms, cassava roots and lemongrass may not seem like a big deal, seeing as all these tropical crops are commonly grown across Malaysia. Except that Surin Deris, a farmer in Kuantan, is doing so in soil that was extensively damaged last year by bauxite mining, which…