Via Channel NewsAsia: S'pore PM Lee urges calm amid worsening haze conditions.
Haze conditions in Singapore worsened on Thursday, with the Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) hitting a new all-time high of 371 at 1pm.
As Singapore deals with the worsening conditions, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has urged for calm. He has also outlined additional measures the government will take to deal with the problem.
These include setting up the Haze Inter-Ministerial Committee and granting medical subsidies for vulnerable groups with haze-related ailments.
Mr Lee said: "We cannot tell how this problem is going to develop because it depends on the burning, it depends on the weather, it depends on the wind.
"It can easily last for several weeks, and quite possibly it could last longer until the dry season ends in Sumatra, which may be in September or October. So we will need to adapt our response to suit the changing situation and protect ourselves in practical and sustainable ways."
He said the priority is to ensure the health and safety of Singaporeans and that life goes on.Meanwhile, the Jakarta Globe reports an Indonesian cabinet minister as saying Singapore is "behaving like a child" about the haze, claiming it's a natural event although the source seems to be the illegal burning of forests in Sumatra by big landowners wanting cleared land for their crops.
The minister is a strong contender for the next Supari Prize, which I award when needed to any politician or official who makes a public-health crisis worse. It's named after Siti Fadilah Supari, the former Indonesian minister of health, who in a fit of pique withheld not only sample of the H5N1 virus, but refused even to tell WHO about new human cases. The prize itself is a large sack of hammers, tastefully sealed with a garland of red tape.
