The announcement hitting the front pages of the local dailies recently was a year-end gift that many homeowners can do without. The Selangor Menteri Besar had announced that fourteen hillside housing areas, in addition to Bukit Antarabangsa, have been identified as being at risk of landslides.
It was stated that local councils have been instructed to continuously monitor the situation and homeowners are also advised to be responsible for maintaining hill slopes that are part of their land. What is surprising about this announcement is that these housing estates have existed for more than a decade and only now the Government realises that they are in the landslide risk zone. Surely, this could not have happened overnight.
The landslide that occurred on December 6, 2008 was the second after the famed Highland Tower landslide in December 1993 - yet, after each incident, the Government had made a similar commitment that local councils will monitor the situation. Except that this time, instead of claiming that areas in the vicinity are not affected by the landslides, they dropped the bombshell.
I believe it is only fair that the state government provides supporting evidence as to how they came to this conclusion for homeowners have the right to such information. In particular, homeowners would be very interested to know what methodology was used to come to this conclusion. Also, we are interested to know why, in previous years, the government kept insisting the areas in the vicinity are safe - thus providing us a false sense of security all these years!
I believe it is only fair that the state government provides supporting evidence as to how they came to this conclusion for homeowners have the right to such information. In particular, homeowners would be very interested to know what methodology was used to come to this conclusion. Also, we are interested to know why, in previous years, the government kept insisting the areas in the vicinity are safe - thus providing us a false sense of security all these years!
In spite of the potential dangers of unsupervised hillside developments, we continue to see glossy advertisements of homes for sale in these areas. At one time, a group of concerned citizens in one of the affected housing estates even held demonstrations against the project that were reported in the press - but as expected, the project is happily chugging along!
While consumers are also to blame for continuing to purchase homes in the landslide risk zone, I believe the onus is on the state government NOT to approve any such projects in the first place. Malaysians have very short memories - there will be a huge hue and cry after each incident, but time will slowly erase the memories and these developments will continue until the next incident occurs. So, who is to be blamed?
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