By Diana Abd Wahab
SHAH ALAM, Dec 26 — The KDEB Waste Management (KDEBWM) and the Hulu Selangor Municipal Council (MPHS) have collected roughly one to two tonnes of garbage every day to ensure that search and rescue works could be carried out smoothly at the Batang Kali landslide location.
KDEBWM worker, Khairul Hafizi, 42, said he was assigned to conduct two or three garbage collection trips with seven other workers during the day and night, Sinar Harian reported.
“We estimated that the collection reached one tonne, and sometimes two tonnes of garbage.
“The main challenge was hot weather and rain because we were not able to carry out our duty. Narrow roads also made it more difficult to coordinate our movements,” he said when met at the location on Saturday.
Khairul Hafizi said three tonnes of garbage were collected during the first day of the incident, which was the highest collection throughout the operation, due to the high number of workforce and media practitioners at the location.
All KDEBWM workers were assigned two shifts, namely morning and night and they have been on the ground since day one of the tragic incident.
In the early morning incident on December 16, a total of 92 victims were involved, 61 of whom survived, while 31 died. Of the number of casualties, 18 were adults and 13 were children, including a one-year-old baby.
In total, 20 bodies were found in sector A (hill view), one in sector B (farm view) and another 10 in sector C (riverside).
