Australian rare earths company Lynas is a political issue in Malaysia

Malaysian Rare Earth Plant Approved Asia Sentinel, 6 Sept 12, “……The Australia-based Lynas operation has become a political football that has been kicked around for months between the opposition Pakatan Rakyat coalition and the government, with thousands of opponents turning up at rallies across the country. It has become a major test of Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak’s attempts to woo international investment to the country.

Two protest groups have been given leave to challenge the decision by the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry to allow the plant to go ahead. They told local media they would seek yet another injunction to stall the plant. However, Lynas officials were jubilant in Sydney and Perth in Western Australia, where a mountain of unprocessed ore has been building for months at the company’s Mount Weld mining facility…. no one would comment for the record, given the touchy political situation in Malaysia,…

The protesters say they fear that Malaysia’s inability to police its environmental laws could end up with the waste byproducts from the plant leaching into the water table or drifting into the atmosphere.

The issue has become so sensitive because a rare earth plant developed in the 1980s ended up contaminating air and groundwater at Bukit Merah near Ipoh. Several people were treated for various cancers because of the plant and later died. Mitsubishi Chemical Corp., which developed the plant, has spent an estimated US$100 million in the effort to clean up the environmental disaster.

September 7, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized

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