The Atomic Energy Licensing Board wants the Public Consultative Committee on Lynas to explain the discrepancies in statistics on public feedback regarding the issuance of a Temporary Operating Licence (TOL) for the project.
Dr Noor Hasnah Khairullah, the special adviser to the board’s director-general, said the statistics presented by the consultative committee had been “misunderstood” because figures showed that most of the over 1,000 respondents did not even read Lynas’ permit application.
“We received 334 visitors and had over 1,000 responses. In some instances, they just brought a stack of responses and handed these in but with different names and IC numbers.
“Out of over 1,000 responses, more than 900 were verbatim identical,” she said at a briefing at the board’s office here yesterday.
On March 1, Prof Abu Hassan Abdullah, representing the consultative committee, was reported by online news portals as having said that only 2 per cent of the 1,123 respondents rejected outright Lynas’ application without substantiating their objections.
He said the majority had urged Lynas to disclose the location of its Permanent Disposal Facility before the issuance of the TOL for its Advanced Material Plant and raised concerns over waste disposal in Pahang.
The committee, comprising 12 members including sociologists, economists, anthropologists, lawyers and academics, was formed to analyse all feedback compiled during the public viewing of Lynas’ permit application from January 3 to 26.
However, Noor Husnah did not say if the board had adopted the statistics in their evaluation when deciding on Lynas’ TOL, noting that the number of respondents who had actually read the permit application was too small.
“We did not make that statement (that only 2 per cent opposed). He (Abu Hassan) represented the committee but we will contact him for clarification,” she said.
