The Defence Ministry has mobilised its assets to carry out cloud seeding to mitigate the hot and hazy conditions in several parts of the country.

Its minister, Mohamad Sabu said two Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) aircraft were sent out this morning to locate suitable clouds in the Selangor and Perak airspace, to precipitate rain.

"We need to find suitable clouds and locations to make cloud seeding a success," he told reporters after visiting the peat soil area at Johan Setia in Klang today.

Also present was Selangor Fire and Rescue Department director Azmi Osman.

According to Mohamad, the hazy conditions in the country were not caused by forest fires here but had been blown from Sumatra, Indonesia.

At 4pm today, the Air Pollutant Index readings for Banting and Johan Setia were unhealthy at 106 and 117 respectively.

Meanwhile, Azmi said the forest fires in the peat soil area were under control and currently only eight hectares (20 acres) of the area were still on fire as compared to 16 hectares (40 acres) yesterday.

He said the dry and hot weather this time of year had made firefighting a problem and as such he advised the public, especially the estate and farm owners not to carry out open burning.

"This month the Selangor Fire and Rescue Department received 545 reports on open burning,” he added.

-Bernama