Residents fail in bid to challenge Lynas licence
UPDATED @ 04:58:57 PM 12-04-2012
AELB has granted provisional approval for Lynas to operate its Gebeng refinery. — File picKUALA LUMPUR, April 12 — Ten local residents failed today in their attempt to challenge the Atomic Energy Licensing Board’s (AELB) authority to approve a temporary operating licence (TOL) for Australian miner Lynas Corp’s controversial rare earth plant in Kuantan.
Justice Rohana Yusuf said that she had rejected the group's bid for a judicial review on the grounds that a parliamentary select committee (PSC) as well as the science, technology and innovation minister were already looking into the same issues raised by the residents.
“The Houses of Parliament are pursuing the same exercise through the PSC... they are the proper channel to look [into] and deliberate on complaints and grievances,” she ruled.
“In the face of the appeal process pending before the minister, the court cannot undermine that process. The court would render that appeal superfluous, and what is enacted by Parliament as meaningless.”
She added that should the findings of the minister differ from the court’s, this would result in “confusion and embarrassment”.
Rohana also said she disagreed with the residents’ lawyer, Tommy Thomas’s previous argument that the PSC had nothing to do with the application in court.
It would be a waste of public resources and funds if all branches of the government were in competition with one another, she said.
Thomas told reporters later that his clients would be filing an appeal.
The residents, who all live between three and 18km of the Lynas refinery in Gebeng on the outskirts of Kuantan had filed the suit on February 17, claiming that the nuclear watchdog had issued Lynas a TOL for rare earth refinery in return for a slice of the firm's revenue here.
The suit seeks a court order cancelling AELB's January 30 approval of the TOL, which has yet to be issued.
Also named were the Department of Environment's (DoE) director-general of environmental quality and Lynas's local subsidiary, Lynas Malaysia Sdn Bhd.
