City Hall monitoring illegal garbage dumps in Inanam
Published on: Wed, Apr 23, 2025
By: Sidney Skinner Text Size: SWMD staff clearing the piles of renovation and bulky waste which looked as if they had been hidden under these cut branches. CITY Hall, on the other hand, is keeping an eye out for litter-bugs in one part of Inanam to prevent illegal garbage dumps from springing up around the Kingfisher area. These include private contractors, tasked with pruning the trees, who failed to clear the cut branches and left these trimmings on the road side. A spokesman for the agency's Solid Waste Management Department (SWMD) said the wrongdoers could find themselves RM10,000 poorer, for the indiscriminate disposal of their refuse. He said this was the maximum fine which could be imposed under its Anti-Litter By-Laws 1984 (Amendment 2005), if they were found guilty in court. 'The pockets of garden waste left behind by the contractors may cause illegal dumps to spring up,' he said. 'This is likely to happen if others living in these places begin adding their own rubbish to these piles.' He said the agency wanted to avoid such potential problems which is why it was cracking down on the errant parties who failed to responsibly dispose of the waste generated by any trees and grass they cut, including private contractors. 'Anyone caught red handed will initially be slapped with a compound for as much as RM500. 'Repeat offenders, and those who are heard headed, run the risk being penalised legally.' This action was prompted by feedback from a rate-payer about the piles of bulky and garden waste strewn at different sections of the reserve along the road to Kingfisher Cove Garden. He provided Hotline with the pertinent details regarding these irregularities, which were forwarded to City Hall and Sabah Electricity (SE). The SWMD spokesman said its staff inspected the road, shortly after being contacted by the media. They confirmed the presence of discarded items – including renovation waste, as well as an unwanted television set and sofa – on the road shoulder, during an inspection of the area, according to him. 'Some banana fronds and tree branches had been heaped onto some of this rubbish, as if the wrong doers had tried to conceal this mess under the greenery,' he said. He said a team of six workers from the Department cleared the refuse later that same day. An excavator and two-tonne open truck was deployed to facilitate their effort according to him. Where the piles of dried branches at another part of the same stretch were concerned, a spokeswoman for City Hall's Landscaping Department said the trees nearby had not been pruned by the agency. 'From the way branches had been cut, it looked as if a 'parang' (machete) had been used to accomplish this task,' she said. 'Our workers usually do this with a hand-held chainsaw.' She said the authority's Tree Unit most recently dealt with a problem involving the greenery on the stretch last Friday. 'We had received a report, in that instance, about some branches which had fallen onto the concrete five-foot-way here. 'One of our six-tonne lorries and a sky-lift, with an articulated arm, were deployed to assist the eight-man team to remove the obstructions. They cut down the branches into more manageable pieces.' A SE spokesman said a check of the company's records showed that the transmission lines on the road were cleared of foreign objects – including any creepers or branches which had extended into the air space of these cables – at the end of last month. The contractor, tasked with carrying out this work, went back to the housing area with four of his workers to remove this debris, according to him. 'When asked why it had taken weeks for him to deal with the trimmings, he told us that this was due to transportation problems,' the spokesman said. 'There were insufficient vehicles for him to use and he encountered some difficulty in renting the conveyance needed to remove the trimmings.' He said the contractor had been instructed not to wait so long in future. 'He should gather up all the waste on the same day that he tends to the creepers and overgrown branches.' * Follow us on Instagram and join our Telegram and/or WhatsApp channel(s) for the latest news you don't want to miss. * Do you have access to the Daily Express e-paper and online exclusive news? Check out subscription plans available.
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