Selangor Menteri Besar Khalid Ibrahim is to be lauded for wanting to declassify the investigation report over the Bukit Antarabangsa landslide tragedy under Section 2(C) of the Official Secrets Act.

The landslide occurred in Taman Bukit Mewah, Bukit Antarabangsa on Dec 6, 2008 at 3.30am. The tragedy claimed five lives and destroyed 14 houses. The widespread media coverage of the landslide and the rescue effort then has turned the nation’s attention to hillside property development.

The Selangor MB’s intention to declassify the investigation report shows that the Selangor Government respects the citizens’ right to information. In doing so, they have set a sterling example of transparency and good governance to the rest of government administrations in the whole country.

For too many decades now, there has been a rush by developers to develop high-end and profitable properties on hillside locations throughout the Klang valley.

Such property development always carries some risk of landslide, as the deforestation near hill tops remove the natural barrier that checks soil erosion. Malaysia is a tropical country that receives a great deal of rainfall every year, and prolonged uncontrolled soil erosion will always threaten the stability of the foundation of hill side properties.

The threat of a landslide resulting from soil erosion or water-clogging underground is further enhanced if the remedial structures like retaining walls or drainage are not built to specification.

Long smelled a serious problem

After the hillside development has been completed and handed over to the local council, there must be constant monitoring of the hillside conditions by the council officers to ensure that the slope remains in a stable and healthy state.

The council should even consider setting up an early warning system, so that there would be high maintenance over the retaining walls, slopes, and the drainage system whenever complaints from the local residents are received.

In the case of Bukit Antarabangsa, the report prepared by the JKR has specified that one of the main causes of the landslide was a burst pipe in an abandoned house.

Bukit Antarabangsa protem action committee secretary general Raymond Jegathesan said that they had long smelled a serious problem, because the basketball and badminton courts in some of the hillside properties were always wet even when there was no rain.

Complaints about the leak and the abandoned houses on the slope were made to the Ampang Jaya Municipal Council but nothing was done, he noted.

All the local councils that have been entrusted with the care of such matter in Selangor’s hilly Klang Valley must discard this “tidak apa” attitude and start to build a long-term maintenance culture which the Malaysian government at all levels so notoriously lacks.

It is gratifying to see the Pakatan Rakyat government setting much higher standards for hillside development; in fact, all property development near watershed areas and on hill sides that exceed a certain slope should be frozen. Profit must never come before the safety of the people!

Compare the performance

Once again, the Selangor MB has made the right decision to release the report of the Bukit Antarabangsa landslide; the people affected by the landslide deserve to know the truth, and the authorities can learn from the tragedy by takings steps in future that will prevent the disaster from repeating elsewhere.

The response from the Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Liew Vui Keong (left) that the Selangor MB has transgressed his jurisdiction is the kind of partisan legal hair-splitting that will not go down well with a rakyat much more discerning in politics than in past era.

With the Pakatan Rakyat in power in Selangor, the people in the whole country can now compare the performance of the two political coalitions in the art of governing the people for the benefit of the nation. There is now genuine competition between the Barisan Nasional and the Pakatan Rakyat to see who can deliver better goods to the people in the end.

New brooms do sweep clean, and at least the PR-controlled Selangor Government has shown itself pretty clear of financial scandals and corruption, despite constant probes by the MACC.

The property development sector is long fraught with talks of irregularities in adhering strictly to the building codes, amidst public knowledge of massive corruption in our administration.

Perhaps that sort of policies pursued by the PR government in Selangor is the exact antidote that Malaysians need to ensure a higher professional standard in our property development sector. - Malaysian Mirror