By Amir Bin Muhamad Talmizi
GOMBAK, 7 May 2019: Malaysians are being supplied with class three water from the country’s river for their daily usage due to contamination of class one and class two water sources.
Chairperson of IIUM River of Life, Dr. Maan Fahmi said, “Class three water is the water that has already been contaminated and needed to be intensively treated to be used by the public.”
He explained, “Even though the intensive treatment has been done to the water, it is still incomparable with the class one water which is the pure water from the earth in terms of the quality of water because not all of the toxic and chemical substance can be removed from the water.”
The classification of water is referred to the Interim National Water Quality Standard (INWQS) that consists of six classes – class I, IIA, IIB, III, IV and V – which refers to classification of rivers in Malaysia. Class one water is the cleanest while class five is the most polluted water.
Meanwhile, IIUM River of Life has organised a number of programmes, including rehabilitation programme like the ‘gotong-royong’ cleaning of the river, either within IIUM or outside the campus, with involvement of the community who lived along river Pusu to improve the quality of the river.
“We hope that more students and staff can get involved in this project especially in our upcoming programme to ensure the objectives of the project can be achieved,” said Dr. Atiah, the secretary of IIUM River of Life.***