Sunday Star 15th February 2009
With reference to the above, statements made 'total prevention of landslide and freezing construction, both not practical; professional engineers can minimise landslide' - Mohd Zin.
This is just saying landslide cannot be eliminated which is as good as saying instead of risking 10 lives, it can be minimised to 2. As far as the public is concerned, many are against hillside development purely because they are in fear of the consequences of collapse buildings where lives will be sacrificed disregard of other losses.
Mohd Zin also made it clear that hillslope development 'fell under the supervision of local authorities as they are the ones to issue approvals'. I have a simple question to ask, is our local authority or in our case MPAJ fit to uphold such responsibilities? Answer is NO. If they are capable, we as residents wouldn't have to wait more than 2 months and pestering for something to be done. And we are still waiting. In other words, it is just as good as saying we can build and allow it to collapse. It is only a matter of time knowingly our local authorities, MPAJ (in our case) has NO OR POOR
- BIGGER BUDGET SET ASIDE by developer SUPERVIEW or may just refused to come up with the money
- Geotechnique or hillslope EXPERTS
- MAINTAINANCE responsibilities
- FOLLOW THROUGH
- IMPLEMENTATION and ENFORCEMENT process.
Does MPAJ have all these criteria to act as a body to protect the public interest or act on our behalf to ensure landslide doesn't take place anymore. The answer is NO. Along with these, I would also like to highlight that bribery and corruption go hand in hand for any work need to be carried out and this is also directed to fellow developers who offer. That was as much for MPAJ. So the Work Ministry as an advising agent has not come up with it's JKR report which we requested over and over again for it to be made public. In our Bukit Antarabangsa case, we were all anxiously waiting for the 1st JKR report which was supposed to be announced to us on 18th December 2008 and the said report turned out to be just a KENYATAAN MEDIA 20 December 2008 to inform us who is to be evacuated! So far, the public has not been given access to any of these landslide reports including Highland towers. Our committee most recent meeting with MPAJ , TYDP Dato M. Yaacob also said that they are waiting for the JKR report. We are in the situation or society if we don't hassle the authorities NOTHING IS GOING TO GET DONE! We are dealing with a lot of inefficiencies in our authorities and government departments, we are human beings with feelings so naturally we get furious after too long the wait. I agree and thank our DPM to call on local authorities to BAN hillside development. So we see the conflict in our government administrations now that WORK MINISTRY as on 15th February say they are going ahead. We have a situation where either our DPM does not honour what he said or the ministry goes against what DPM had instructed. It is really unfair to lead to such confusion. Stop fooling us! By the way, if hillslope developments are to go on, I would think that members of our community are on their feet to even buy a property near a slope.
Regards,
YENHEE
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