Fear of Kampung Buah Pala II haunts villagers

ARCHIVES 2010

By admin-s On Sep 18, 2010

(FMT) GEORGE TOWN: Kampung Melayu Tanjung Tokong residents here are having sleepless nights. They have their reason: the “ghost” of Kampung Buah Pala is haunting them.

Like Kampung Buah Pala, the residents of Kampung Melayu Tanjung Tokong fear that their historical village will also be demolished.

And they want the state government to form a special task force immediately to address and resolve all issues pertaining to their village before allowing redevelopment project on the site.

In making this call, Tanjung Tokong Villagers Association chairman Mohd Salleh Yahaya slammed Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng’s administration for “doing very little” in resolving the outstanding issues faced by the village, especially on the preservation of heritage.

The state government has recently issued a stop-work order on the redevelopment of Tanjung Tokong undertaken by the Urban Development Authority (UDA).

Acknowledging this though, Salleh, however, is upset that the state government had been silent over the pressing issue since.

He claimed the state government had left it to UDA and the villagers to resolve the issue among themselves.

He said UDA has now seized the opportunity to split the villagers by making many “dubious” offers of compensation to them.

Claiming that some have been influenced by UDA’s offers, he said most villagers were still united to preserve their village.

“By right, the state government should have formed a special task force to resolve the problems. The task force could become a middle man between UDA and the villagers,” Salleh said.

Howerver, the state government has always claimed that it was powerless to stop UDA from evicting the villagers, flattening the site and carrying out its development scheme.