Introduction
In the beginning of 2013, bauxite mining activities has conducted in areas such as Bukit Goh, Bukit Kuantan, and Bukit Sagu in Kuantan, Pahang (Bernama, 2016). During the transportation process, bauxite-laden truck might swirls red dust across the road and heavy metals in soil from bauxite mining may be entering into the domestic rivers and shores and this caused the water supply to be contaminated in Kuantan. However, the government in Indonesia has banned bauxite mining activities and began to focus in local metal processing in the early of 2014, which this affects China as they have insufficient bauxite. Hence, the territory of Pahang, which has stores of bauxite especially in the Kuantan region, has moved in to accommodate the huge needs of bauxite in China. Many of the small landowners have been operated illegal mining activities for huge profits, for instance, a farmer named Surin Beris has made a million ringgit within 6 months. However, the problem of unregulated mining techniques for mineral extraction has arisen due to illegal mining activities operated by irresponsible parties which resulted in environmental issues and impacts on human health (AFP, 2015).
Malaysian bauxite production was simply 963,000 tonnes in 2014 and it was expected to increase quadrupled year-on-year. This showed that government did not take any legal action on the illegal mining activities as it could bring wealth into the country. However, this massive production in a short period of time combined with uncontrolled and unsustainable legitimate and illegal mining action has affected environment and that conveys hazard to general wellbeing and harm to the biological community. Hence, the objectives in this report is to highlight the ethical issues and the impacts by issues related to bauxite mining in Kuantan, Pahang, to argue whether or not bauxite mining is ethical by supported with relevant views of philosophers and to draw conclusion to it as well as to propose recommendations to the issues arising from bauxite mining in Pahang. Nevertheless, according to Caroll’s corporate social responsibility pyramid, improving quality of life is the most important duty that government and landowners should be responsible for so that community would care, support and protect the government and landowners. However, although bauxite mining would bring wealth to the country but it has developed environmental issues and causes harm to human wellbeing which this does not satisfy the community and resulted in an increase numbers of protestors and that leads to ruining the image of the country and eventually affects economy downturn. When community is not satisfied, it can be considered as an unethical action under the theory of utilitarianism. However, a Task Force was recognized by the Academy of Sciences Malaysia to investigate this matter and propose solutions to the government in order that bauxite mining activities operated in a sustainable method with the least harm to the environment and so to the human health.
In the scope of this report, it is important for the Task Force to investigate bauxite mining in Pahang and to check on the port handling procedures and transportation as well as mining techniques so that It could protect the environment and general wellbeing. In this report, ethical issues and stakeholders’ interests will be identified, major impacts by the issues will be discussed, able to relate relevant theories and concepts on ethics and corporate social responsibility, argued with relevant views of philosopher, draw appropriate conclusion and propose recommendations. However, there are limitations in this report as bauxite mining has only been discussed but there are also many other types of mining in Malaysia such as gold mining and coal mining which have negatively impact on environment and human health. Hence, it is important for all responsible parties to further study other types of mining in Malaysia in order to fully protect the environment and to reduce diseases rate in Malaysia that might be caused by mining activities.
3.1 The effects of environment
When bauxite mining did not handle properly it will produced dust and it would be one of the environmental issue. Wind-blown dust mostly will spread to huge areas such as housing area and agricultural neighbourhoods of the locations being used. After bauxite has been extracted from mining, it will be transported to the washing places to remove clay and eventually will be transported to the main industrial area in Kuantan, Pahang and also to Port of Kuantan. Lorries are the main transportation vehicles during the transportation processes and most of the lorry drivers utilize general road which would normally passed by housing areas, and that would spread dust around and pervades into their houses. This has affected the health of those residents who live near those transportation roads because of bauxite dust that they disclosed in their daily life. For example, residents had complaint of an increase of skin rash and respiratory issues. However, bauxite is generally mined for aluminium which it consists of heavy metals such as mercury that would cause cancer. Besides, other toxic chemical substances would also be released, for instance arsenic, cadmium and more which could endangered human wellbeing once it is penetrated into their lungs. According to research, bauxite is a rock that can be found in the deep ground and it released a low level of radioactive substances such as uranium, thorium and potassium during refining process which it has concerned by the public as it could cause them cancer and harm the environment too.
3.2 Road safety
One of the problem that bauxite mining industries in Pahang must be aware of which is road safety as news reported that there are an increase numbers of fatal accidents involving bauxite trucks. Due to the fact that truck drivers wants to get more salary to make ends meet and hence, they tried to overload their trucks which in turn destroying infrastructure and decrease the lifetime of road network, as they are being paid per tonnes. Besides, most of the truck drivers drive too fast and dangerously so that they could earn more trips per day which they are paid per trips. However, this has affected them to have insufficient rest and might be the reason of fatal accidents. Moreover, according to the Malaysian times reported that irresponsible parties do not properly handle brakes’ problems of their bauxite trucks as they are only interested into operating bauxite mining activities only. This has not only endangered the lives of the truck drivers but also the innocent people that are travelling onto the same road with them. However, some truck drivers aims to earn more trips and hence they did not follow the designated and restricted pathway to the port as it is not the fastest way to the port, thus public roads might clogged with large trucks carrying bauxite to the port which also pollute the environment and affected the health of the residents due to the clouds of dust that produced by bauxite trucks
3.3 The quality of water supply
Bauxite mining practices occurs at the upstream of Sungai Kuantan which is the central origin of local water supply in Pahang. A task force has investigated that unregulated bauxite mining practices have contaminated the river water and its tributaries. The experts from the task force have taken a few river water quality test at the downstream of the bauxite mines and hence it has resulted as poor water quality because of the increments in suspended load. The suspended load that caused by bauxite mining practices can be defined as the fine-grained sediment such as clay that could not be dissolved in the river water during transportation. However, huge volumes of sediments suspended in the river water would discolourized and causes the water to be muddy. Moreover, due to an increments in suspended load has affected the river to become more shallow and higher opportunity for eutrophication which in turn causes depletion of oxygen in the water body and that destroying fish species, increase in flash floods as well as disturb the water treatment system in Pahang. The procedure of bauxite washing can likewise release toxic waste which will pollute the river water and when rainfall occurs, it will spread throughout the water which this will affect all living species in the river. Residues that are left on the surface of the road during transportation would also be blown by wind and might penetrate into river water. The toxic chemical substances could endangered residents’ health if they consumed for a long time. Besides, experts from the task force have taken the water that consumed by locals for tests in laboratory and outcome shown that the level of aluminium in water has surpass the normal level which is at 0.19 milligrams per litre that set by Health Ministry in Malaysia. This has proven that it will affect the health of the locals and could increase cancer risk. Besides, regular water treatment systems are not particularly intended to evacuate toxic substances at the level of condensation and filtration. Thus, there are high opportunity for these toxic substances to get away from the water treatment system and penetrate into the water distribution system and eventually extending to edible water.