With a population of 28 million, Curtis only just realised that the country’s 12.4 million Facebook users are a formidable force.
Mariam Mokhtar, FMT
For someone who heads a technology-intensive company, and who has pumped several hundred million ringgits into a boggy area on the east coast of Malaysia, Nicholas Curtis, the chairman of Lynas Corporation, appears to have underestimated the power of the Internet and social media websites. Most of all, he miscalculated Malaysia’s most potent resource – its people.
Curtis thought that with the help of Malaysian politicians, he could face up to the might of China and end its monopoly of the production of rare earths. He did not bargain on the might of the Malaysian people who are interested in protecting their lives, their families, future generations and the environment.
Where has Curtis been all this time? Has he not heard of the Internet revolution which toppled the governments of Tunisia and Egypt? Internet activism is not just for challenging governments. Perhaps, it is time Curtis listened to the voices of the ordinary people rather than the few in the Barisan Nasional government.
Curtis and his advisers should have known that politics, be it in Malaysia or Australia, is not about improving people’s lives. It never was, and it never will be.
If anything, the poor handling of the Lynas issue has shown the Malaysian people that big businesses, even if they were to bring in billions of ringgits in investment, cannot be trusted.
The public was not consulted, issues were not properly addressed and base-line studies were not conducted, to evaluate and assess the feasibility of the project.
Why was no Detailed Environmental Impact Assessment (DEIA) done? Why is the provision for treating the radioactive waste being addressed only after the plant has been constructed?
In an interview with Bloomberg, Curtis warned Putrajaya that foreign companies were having doubts about investing in Malaysia. He expressed regret that he had not placed more emphasis on the power of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, to oppose the setting up of the Lynas Advanced Materials Plant (LAMP) in Gebeng.
He said, “I’d have dealt with the emerging community debate by the social media a little bit more intensely, a little bit earlier. We probably didn’t recognise the power of the social media to create an issue.”
With a population of 28 million, Curtis only just realised that the country’s 12.4 million Facebook users are a formidable force.
Was he assured that any potential problems and opposition to his project could be “smoothed over” by the application of suitable emollients?
Lesson for investors
With Lynas having to accept further conditions, its operational start-up has been delayed, incurring losses of RM32 million per month, which has affected customer confidence. Over the past year, shares in Lynas dropped 51%, in Sydney.
Curtis claimed that the plant in Gebeng is Lynas’ sole means of refining the ore. So, the delays caused by waiting for the “promised refining permit”, have resulted in thousands of tonnes of unprocessed raw materials piling up at its Mount Weld mine, in Western Australia.
Lynas now has to submit plans, which incorporate two additional changes, to the Atomic Energy Licensing Board (AELB), before the Temporary Operating Licence (TOL) will be issued.
These measures were initiated by the Ministry of Science and Technology (Mosti), probably to appease the growing opposition to Lynas and the calls for the plant to be scrapped.
The parliamentary select committee (PSC) has also ordered the AELB to ensure that Lynas’ waste would be shipped out of the country.
The Lynas experience should be a lesson for potential investors to Malaysia not to see everything in monetary terms.
Curtis said: “The destabilising of our licensing has in fact destabilised their [foreign investors'] commitment to investing downstream in Malaysia. That’s bad for the Malaysian economy in the longer term.”
He is not the only one worried about “the longer term”. The fishermen, farmers and others who live and work in the area, are also worried about their future health prospects, and the environment.
