KUCHING, Sept 2 2026: A social activist has called on Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to push for a strict punitive enforcement mechanisms against ASEAN member states for causing haze pollution as Malaysians continue to suffer from haze year after year.
Voon Shiak Ni said the present haze crisis gives the the federal government an important opportunity to place this issue of transboundary haze crisis affecting Sarawak and Malaysia as a whole firmly on the ASEAN agenda.
“Malaysia need to address the yearly issue of haze affecting Malaysians and to emphasize strengthening current the ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution (AATHP) enforcement and closing operational gaps over creating new punitive laws or full treaty overhauls.
“The agreement recognises that fires and smoke originating in one country can cause serious environmental, economic and health consequences in another but lack strict punitive enforcement mechanisms against member states,” she said in a statement today.
Voon said Sarawak has been experiencing haze year in and out and this is not merely an environmental inconvenience and the severe haze affecting Sarawak today has triggered a public health emergency.
“Sarawak is suffocating and we are hopeful that the prime ministercan do more to ease the critical haze pollution in Sarawak and to make use of his position in ASEAN to address the issue of enforcement and the issue of supranational authority with broad powers to impose penalties on a member state for failing to control pollution originating within its territory,” she said .
Voon stressed that an agreement without effective consequences risks becoming little more than a statement of intent and cannot help to resolve or control future haze pollution .
She said AATHP is a legally binding regional pact signed in 2002 in Kuala Lumpur to prevent, monitor, and mitigate land and forest fire haze, ratified by all 10 ASEAN member states including Indonesia .
She said the core agenda of the AATHP is an agreement between all the member states to control and reduce smoke haze pollution through joint emergency response, national legislative steps, and regional cooperation .
She noted that Malaysia was the Chair of ASEAN last year in 2025 and being one of the active member state in ASEAN , stating that it is long overdue that Malaysia need to push for strict punitive enforcement mechanisms against member states for causing haze pollution as Malaysians continue to suffer from haze year after year .
“The present haze pollution in Sarawak is critical now with parts of Sarawak facing hazardous API exceeding 500 and its not getting better today due to massive forest fires from Kalimantan,”
she said .
