Water

Country Water Action: Malaysia
Water Treatment Success Overshadows Solid Waste Management
(April 2006)

Wastewater treatment plants are mushrooming in Malaysia as a response to the increasing demands for better and more effective sanitation services resulting from the country’s remarkable economic growth after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Solid waste management, however, remains in the backseat.

Contents Water Treatment Reaches High Peak Policy Shift Propelled by a Vision What about Sludge? Making Haste to Control Solid Waste

The Indah Water Konsortium (IWK) has been taking charge of Malaysia’s sewage management since 1994, and has built for the country one of the most effective sewerage management systems in the developing world. The system boasts of around 8,000 public sewage treatment plants, 500 network pumping stations, 14,500 kilometers of underground sewerage pipes and half a million household septic tanks connected to the sewers.

As the demand for effective sanitation increased because of Malaysia’s economic growth since 1998, IWK turned to other private companies to build wastewater management systems. Malaysia’s 26 million people generate about six million tons of sewage every year, most of which is treated and released into the rivers.

“Since about 98 percent of our fresh water supply comes from surface water, we need to ensure proper treatment of sewage,” said Shaiful Bakhri bin Said Abdullah, an IWK official.

In February this year, Malaysia's Ministry of Energy, Water and Communication awarded a US$113.4 million contract to a consortium of three Japanese companies to build four more treatment plants. The four new plants are to be built in Kuala Lumpur, Negeri Sembilan and Malacca, and will have a total capacity of treating over 40,000 cubic meters of wastewater a day using the oxidation ditch treatment processes.

Top

The leap towards effective sanitation began with Wawasan 2020 (or Vision 2020), a brainchild of former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad. Presented to the Malaysian Business Council in 1996, it called for a united and industrialized Malaysia by the year 2020.

Wawasan 2020 embodied a renewed national policy, and advocated privatization as “an important cornerstone of national development and national efficiency strategy.” It also called for increased involvement of the country’s private sector, while ensuring that the poor have access to basic, high-quality, low-cost services, at the same time, avoiding “unproductive monopolistic practices” and ensuring workers’ welfare.

Top

Until about five decades ago, Malaysia's solid waste disposal system was not different from what is still found in many developing countries. Night soil carriers emptied household waste into cans and sold them to farmers who then used it as manure. Today, however, the bulk of solid waste produced by both urban and rural areas is packed in 230 landfills, which are close to overflowing.

Malaysia produces only about a kilogram of solid waste per capita per day, but estimates suggest that only 1 to 13 percent of Malaysia’s solid waste is recycled. While privatizing solid waste management began in 1996, innovative ways for managing solid waste has taken a slump. Sludge produced by water treatment plants remain difficult to dispose.

Top

Malaysia’s success in sewage treatment is not matched by its record in solid waste management. “The treated sludge is clean and can be used in many ways, but no one wants it. We've even tried giving it away for free, but no one wants it. It all gets dumped in the landfills,” an IWK official adds.

The recent Ninth Malaysia Plan makes only a passing reference to the neglect of sludge and solid waste management. And the only mention of solid waste states that the government will undertake “research and development on reuse of sludge for industrial, agricultural and landscape purposes.”