On Nov 16, 2015 The Star newspaper reported that Lynas Corp Ltd’s chief executive officer (CEO) Amanda Lacaze as saying, “It’s hard to run a scare campaign in the face of hard evidence, referring to protests against the plant’s location in Kuantan.”

The ‘hard evidence’ referred to was the claim that the data on “low background radiation and harmful emissions collected by third parties over the last four years...”

It is understandable why she made such a claim at this time of the year. The annual general meeting (AGM) of Lynas’ shareholders is to be held on Nov 23, 2015(Monday) in Sydney. We wonder why the regulating authorities, the Atomic Energy Licensing Board (AELB), had remained absolute silence over the matter and allow an interested party to make such a claim. Isn’t AELB the rightful authorities entrusted to adjudicate on the matter?

The paper further reported that “Lynas Corp’s radiological safety adviser Prof Dr Ismail Bahari said the company had invested RM50 millions into equipment to neutralize any acidity, metals or contaminants from its residue.”

“He further added that another RM75 millions was spent on a system to treat its gas emissions and scrub harmful sulfuric acid in the gas”

Should the Kuantan residents feel grateful for the ‘extra mile’ Lynas Malaysia has taken to ensure the emissions are controlled within the permissible limits? If the monies concerned had not been spent how would the stakeholders ever know if the Lynas Advanced Materials Plant (Lamp) is operating within safe limits of all the harmful substances and gases it produced?

When Lamp was granted the temporary operating licence (TOL), the director-general (DG) of AELB Raja Abdul Aziz Raja Adnan, in reply to questions, said that the TOL was issued with the aim of collecting various data to ascertain that Lamp’s gaseous and liquid emissions and solid wastes produced are in accordance to that advanced by Lynas in their documents submitted in support of the application for the operating licence.

And here we have instead the interested party making all the statements concerning the various data which fall under the duties and role of the regulating authorities to collect and verify.

We hereby urge the Atomic Energy Licensing Board to come forward to state and verify if Lynas Corp’s claims on emissions and wastes are authentically accurate.