By Media Selangor Team
PETALING JAYA, May 14 — Menteri Besar Dato’ Seri Amirudin Shari has urged the federal government to include states in the Data Centre Task Force (DCTF), which is responsible for ensuring the sector’s sustainable growth.
He said he had taken note of concerns raised by Selangor residents over potential issues associated with data centres, including higher water usage, power supply instability and possible noise pollution affecting local communities.
Amirudin said the inclusion of state representatives in the task force would offer valuable insights to the federal government.
“I understand that these issues are being tackled at the federal level through the DCTF, which already includes many agencies.
“If I may recommend to the Digital Minister (Gobind Singh Deo), all state governments should also be represented in this task force so that we can collaborate, plan better and analyse the exact volume of data centres needed nationally to drive forward Malaysia’s ambition of becoming an AI nation by 2030,” he said.
Amirudin said this during the launch of NEXTDC’s RM1 billion KL1 data centre in Petaling Jaya today.
The Tier IV data centre, with a capacity of 65MW and certified under NVIDIA’s Data Centre Certification Programme, is designed to support large-scale use cases, including high-volume e-commerce, cloud service providers and critical infrastructure such as healthcare and defence.
Amirudin also noted NEXTDC’s efforts to address issues linked to data centres, including the use of air cooling and rainwater harvesting instead of relying primarily on liquid cooling.
“It would be good for your team to communicate these efforts more widely, especially to the local community,” he said.
The Menteri Besar also acknowledged the downside and challenges surrounding the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), including safety, security and sustainability concerns.
To address this, he said the state government is formulating an AI White Paper to better understand both the advantages and risks of the technology.
“This is fundamental to strike a balance between progress and security because that is the only way we can gain the trust of the people to take advantage of the potential of AI while understanding there will always be certain risks involved,” he said.
