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Jenjarom is a town located in theKuala Langat District ofSelangor state inMalaysia. Around 95% of the 30,000[1] residents areHokkienChinese and theHokkien dialect is the main language used locally (althoughMalaysian Mandarin as well as the national language,Bahasa Malaysia are widely spoken by its multi-ethnic residents from three main ethnicities acting as a lingua franca).[2] The town also administered by the Zones 9, 10 (Chinese) and 6 (Malay) of theKuala Langat Municipal Council.
The majority of the town's Hokkien population trace their roots to theFujianese counties ofYongchun,Anxi,Nan'an andDehua. Other residents are mostly nativeethnic Malays ofJavanese,Minang,Banjarese andBugis descent, fellow ethnic Chinese ofHakka orTeochew descent, with a smallIndian community of both predominantly HinduTamils andPunjabiSikhs.[2]
In the early 20th century, Jenjarom was an agricultural village, with around a dozen shops along the main street. Pig farming was significant in the surrounding areas. Fewer than 20 families were Chinese.[2]
During theMalayan Emergency in the 1950s, as part of theBriggs Plan to cut off supplies to the (mostly Chinese) Communist insurgents,New Villages were set up to segregate rural Chinese villagers from the insurgents. Jenjarom was one of them and is today the largest such 'village' in the state.[3] In 1950 and 1951 the population grew rapidly to around 5,000.[2]
In the early years of independent Malaysia, on 26 April 1967, Prime MinisterTunku Abdul Rahman visited the burgeoning town and announced an upgrade to its infrastructure, which was then implemented under theSecond Malaysia Plan.[2]
Industrial activity in Jenjarom increased, along with the development ofpalm oil production in the surrounding land.[4]
In the 1990s, following a period of high youth unemployment, the town became known for various social ills, includinggangsterism,gambling,prostitution anddrug trafficking.[3] In the nine years to 2000, Jenjarom's population more than doubled, to 24,483.[5] By the turn of the century, these troubles had abated.[3]
Jenjarom is the site of the Fo Guang Shan Dong Zen Temple (佛光山東禪寺) and Institute in Sungai Jarom.[6] Though this predominantly serves the Chinese Buddhist population, the non-Chinese community benefits from the tourism it attracts: there were about a quarter of a million visitors in 2004.[3] There are also several prominent Chinese Temples like Ban Siew Keng Temple (仁嘉隆萬壽宮) and Tung Loh Temple (仁嘉隆铜锣庙) located in Jenjarom.
In the months following China's January 2018 banning of nearly allplastic waste imports,[7] around 40 factories sprung up around Jenjoram to take up some of the business. Often hidden in the local palm oil plantations, 90% had no permits, asMalaysia suddenly became one of the world's biggest plastic importers.[4]
In many cases, existing Chinese waste processing businesses relocated to Jenjarom,[7] attracted by its proximity toPort Klang[1] - Malaysia's largest port and the entry point for most of its plastic imports - together with the cultural fit of the town's Chinese business population, and allegedly corruptible officials.[4]
Unrecyclable plastics should be sent to waste centres but Jenjarom's illegal operations simply burned them, releasing poisonous andcarcinogenic fumes into the atmosphere, causing respiratory complaints and skin rashes among local people. Several local fish and prawn business lost all their stock, apparently due to toxic wastewater from the factories. When 33 of the plants were closed down, more than 17,000 tonnes of the waste was left behind as an unresolved problem for authorities. Most of the operations quickly reopened nearby.[1][4]
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