KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 4 — As floodwaters subside nationwide, the National Security Council (NSC) is intent on ridding all the illegal vegetable farms in Cameron Highlands it blames for causing the country’s biggest floods in decades.

Malay-language broadsheet Mingguan Malaysia reported NSC secretary Datuk Mohamed Thajudeen Abdul Wahab as linking the disaster and landslides to logging and illegal land clearing at Cameron Highlands in Pahang, among other places.

“There are consequences to what we do to the environment; we’re paying the price now,” he was quoted saying.

Thajudeen told the Sunday edition of Utusan Malaysia that the destruction of illegal vegetable farms in Cameron Highlands had been halted since December 26 because of inclement weather.

“We’ll meet on Tuesday to see if circumstances allow us to continue razing those illegal vegetable farms,” he was quoted saying.

Thajudeen also said the NSC will estimate overall losses from the floods that inundated the east coast last month once things return to normal.

Malay-language paper Berita Harian reported Friday that the damages from the floods, which saw over 230,000 people evacuated from their homes, were estimated to cost Putrajaya and state governments over RM1 billion.

The state that was hardest hit by the annual floods, Kelantan, sustained estimated damages worth RM200 million, Kelantan’s Flood Disaster Operations Committee chairman Datuk Seri Mustapa Mohamed was quoted saying.

The PAS Kelantan government said Wednesday that it would take sterner action against illegal logging and maintained that the state government abided by the National Land Council’s logging limit of 5,960 hectares a year.