Smog covers Kuala Lumpur capital city of Malaysia (Photo: AFP/VNA) Hanoi (VNA) – Malaysia is planning to seed clouds to make rain as air quality in many areas of the country has reached unhealthy levels due to smog from forest fires in neighbouring Indonesia.
Smog regularly covers parts of Southeast Asia during the dry season when burning is used by Indonesian people to clear land for palm oil and other crops.
In the latest outbreak, parts of Malaysia’s eastern state of Sarawak on Borneo island have been blanketed over the past few days.
Gary Theseira, an official at the Malaysian environment ministry, said the country is preparing to carry out cloud seeding to induce rain in an effort to ease the smog.
The country’s meteorological department warned on September 8 that hot conditions will prevail for another week, and the monsoon season is expected to arrive only at the end of September or early October.
The Malaysian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation said it would lodge a complaint with Indonesia for the haze, and called for quick action to be taken to put out the fires.
Meanwhile, Indonesia is struggling with the worst forest fires in two decades. Under pressure from neighbours, its President Joko Widodo last month warned that officials would be sacked if they failed to stamp out forest fires.-VNA
VNA
