The Preliminary Study of Resources and Their Sufficiency for the Enforcement Program of EIA Project in Malaysia

Abstract

EIA reports approved by the Department of Environment (DOE) come with mandatory Conditions of Approval (COA) that the Project Proponent (PP) must adhere to. To ensure compliance with these COA, the DOE undertakes an enforcement program. Skilled DOE officers execute this enforcement following a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). However, during the enforcement process, challenges are anticipated, especially during the developmental phase of any EIA project. In order to pinpoint the resources available and evaluate their adequacy in enforcing EIA COA, a pilot study was carried out before the actual study to evaluate the validity and reliability of the instrument. The instrument consists of 7 sections. Section A aims to identify the demography of the respondents while Section B aims to evaluate the importance of 12 background information for any project prior to EIA enforcement.  Section C is about the importance of resources for EIA enforcement. Section D aims to determine the sufficiency of the required resources for EIA enforcement. Section E is about determining the problems faced by DOE officers during EIA enforcement. Section F of the survey attempts to understand the perception of DOE officers towards project proponent or EIA consultant during EIA enforcement. Lastly, Section G of the survey attempts to understand the evaluation of DOE officers towards a set of recommendation for improvement during EIA enforcement. It was found that the validity and reliability were at good level, and can be used at next actual study. Section B scores Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.807 while Section and Section D each score 0.888 and 0.875, respectively. Section E scores the lowest i.e. 0.704 but this still falls within acceptable reliability. Section F and Section G each score 0.866 and 0.850 respectively. In addition, a normality test was also carried out for the responses. Each section was tested with three normality test namely statistical tests (Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk), descriptive statistics (skewness and kurtosis), as well as eyeball tests (histogram and Q-Q plot, Except for Section B, others sections follow normal distribution. In conclusion, the instrument that have been developed here satisfy the standard necessary for the development of survey questionnaire. All the developed constructs have good internal consistency. While it is noteworthy to bear in mind that normality test is sensitive to sample size, this paper put forward the contention that this instrument can be utilized for actual study in the future.