'Can't escape the burning smell': Johan Setia residents endure weeks of haze

KLANG: A burning smell hangs over Kampung Johan Setia, where thick haze has lingered for weeks, leaving residents with itchy eyes, sore throats and coughs that refuse to go away.

For stall owner Nurarifah Fariha Huthfi, 35, the effects of the haze are plain to see in the customers she serves every day.

"Many people are unwell. I see many of my customers falling sick, coughing. Some have been coughing on and off for a whole month," she told the New Straits Times.

She said the acrid smell of burning was impossible to escape, even without stepping far from home, and was noticeably stronger in Johan Setia.

"Even right now without a mask, you can smell it, right? It has a distinct smell.

"And right now (the API reading) is only around 160. When it was at 192, your eyes would itch, your throat would itch and hurt... it was truly awful."

Nurarifah said she was not spared, working through a brief fever and repeated eye infections because she could not afford to close her stall.

"What choice did I have? If I take leave, my workers take leave too, and it becomes a headache!"

She said the haze was at times so thick that she could barely see, and the children in her family were repeatedly falling ill, including her 9-year-old asthmatic daughter.

She blamed the haze partly on the vegetable farms behind the village, claiming that some people took advantage of the hazy conditions to carry out open burning.

She said the farmland stretched deep behind the village, all the way to Bandar Putera Klang, about 6km to 8km away, and its full extent could only be seen by driving in with a four-wheel-drive vehicle.

Nurarifah, who has lived in Kampung Johan Setia since 1994, said haze was not new to the area.

She recalled severe wildfires there when she was a child, when the area was still dense forest and burning was common.

"Furthermore, it's peat soil. Peat soil is one of the hardest, once it catches fire, it's extremely hard to put out."

Despite the recent bout of itching, sore eyes and a cold, she said she had largely learned to live with the haze.

One of the farmers in Kampung Johan Setia, Hafiz Shaari, 65, claimed that his farm has sprinklers, insisting that open burning was no longer the norm in the area as the Department of Environment was keeping a close watch on farming activities.

Instead, he pointed to the rise of factories and warehouses on the village's peat soil as the cause of the persistent haze.

"As far as I know there are no fires," said Hafiz, who has grown vegetables there since 1995.

He said after 2000, industrial buildings had sprung up across the area.

"They have built factories, workshops, and storage warehouses.

"Before 2000, not much development took place, but now many industrial buildings have come up."