Malaysia to foot US$250 million flood bill amid warning of more misery to come

Severe floods have displaced thousands of residents and destroyed homes and crops, worsening the plight of the poorest communities in Kelantan

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A man walks past a home damaged by floodwaters in Tumpat, Malaysia’s Kelantan state, on Wednesday. Photo: AFP

Published: 1:30pm, 4 Dec 2024

Floods that swept across nine Malaysian states last week killing six, devastating homes and ruining crops, caused almost 1 billion ringgit (US$244 million) in damages, the government has said.

That economic cost is a fraction of the nearly US$3 billion lost to deluges over the last four years as the climate crisis intensifies natural disasters – and the bill for the clean-up.

Spared from typhoons, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes that plague neighbouring Philippines and Indonesia, Malaysia is instead battered each year by floods due to rainfall which is up to four times higher than the global average.

This year’s northeast monsoon season – the more severe of the two monsoons that feed Malaysia’s waterways each year – began in November and has been exacerbated by the La Niña weather phenomenon, which meteorologists say intensifies rainfall and the scale of flooding.

As the floodwaters receded in Kelantan and Terengganu, the two worst-hit states, leaving residents to pick through shattered homes, warnings of fresh rains came through.

The Malaysian Meteorological Department says it expects a monsoon surge to occur from December 8 to 14 in the eastern part of the Malaysian peninsula.