The parliamentary select committe (PSC) on the Lynas rare earth-processing plant today heard that the prices of terrace and semi-detached houses within the factory’s vicinity continued to increase despite claims that the factory will scare away property buyers.

NONE “It is unaffected, the price has increased until today... For the last five years, Lynas has not affected the supply and demand of properties in Kuantan, including areas that are close to Gebeng (where the plant was built),” said property valuer Mohd Fawzi Ibrahim ( right ).

These statistics, said Mohd Fawzi, who has 13 years of experience in Kuantan, are from the Property Market Report 2011 prepared by the Valuation and Property Services Department.

An example, he said, is Taman Bandar Damansara which is approximate 11km away from the RM700 million plant, where the prices of medium-cost semi-detached houses spiked from RM150,000 to RM250,000 between 2007 to 2011.

For terrace houses, he added, prices have also increased from RM100,000 to RM130,000 within the same period.

However, Mohd Fawzi said the data was a reflection of deals that had been sealed and which could take one to two years.

When pointed out by PSC chairperson Khaled Nordin that this data may not reflect Lynas’ impact on property sales as the controversy only broke out in 2011, Mohd Fawzi said early indications for 2012 still show strong sales.

“For the first four months of 2012, the sales have been better than 2011. At the moment I’ve not seen any drop in prices,” he said.

No evidence of higher cancer cases

Meanwhile, oncologist Dr Fuad Ismail said even though the Asian Rare Earth plant in Bukit Merah has been used as reference for alleged high leukemia cases in Gebeng, there was no evidence that the plant has caused the cancer.

NONE The claims of leukemia cases, Fuad ( left ) said, was made shortly after the plant closed down in 1994 but the fallout of such exposure should only appeared much later.

“You don’t get cancer immediately, it takes around five years for leukemia or 10-20 years for a solid cancer.

“A lot of data is based on mathematical model and it suggests that the risk of cancer would have been 100 times higher of the national average, but then we should be seeing a lot more cases in Bukit Merah,” he said.

Fuad added that there was no evidence that the increase of background radiation had any correlation with increase in cancer cases.

“I realise that the background radiation in Malaysia is quite high but at Lynas the increase of background radiation was only 0.02 mSv, this is a negligible dosage of increase,” he said.

A total of 10 experts testified at the last day of hearing today. The report is expected to be tabled in Parliament on June 14.