Group seeks to know why Selangor ‘Skip’ public consultation

(The Rakyat Post) – The Selangor government’s “untrustworthiness” is yet again displayed in the inclusion of the Serdang-Kinrara-Putrajaya Expressway (Skip) into the Subang Jaya Local Plan, the Say No to Kidex (SNTK) committee alleged.

This, following state local government, research and development executive, councillor (exco) Datuk Teng Chang Khim’s remark that the local plan could be amended to remove any reference of Skip, provided the Subang Jaya Municipal Council (MPSJ) and the Selangor Town and Country Planning Department undergo the rigorous process of conducting fresh public briefings on Skip.

Four days ago, Teng, who sits on Selangor’s state planning committee (SPC), was quoted by the Malay Mail Online that he himself was not aware of any public briefings conducted in 2012 on Skip.

Bukit Gasing assemblyperson and former MPSJ councillor Rajiv Rishyakaran had previously revealed that the controversial Skip highway was never once mentioned in any public hearings conducted in February 2012.

“Teng’s grasp of due process under the Town and Country Planning Act, in view of what Rajiv had announced, is certainly appalling and unbefitting of his role as the state exco in charge of local councils.

“To understand why, we only need to look at the exact same fiasco involving a local plan in 2012 in the neighbouring city council of Petaling Jaya (MBPJ) where the officers brazenly admitted that a staggering 220 amendments were made to the Petaling Jaya Local Plan 2 (RTPJ2) without going through a public hearing exercise.

“That fiasco was discovered by Petaling Jaya residents when there was pressure to develop the PKNS Football Field in Kelana Jaya.

The field was originally presented to the public as a green space and gazetted as such but was amended illegally to allow commercial development,” SNTK member Mak Khuin Weng pointed out in a statement today.

Two years ago, RTPJ2 got entangled in controversy, after documents referred to by the Selangor Town and Country Planning revealed that the public field owned by PKNS was zoned as a recreational area, whilst the documents referred to by MBPJ indicated it was a commercial zone.

Then Petaling Jaya City Councillor, Derek Fernandez described the matter as the largest land fraud in the country, adding that the “scam” was done by those within the council, whose intention was to change the plan, to cause substantial increase in the land value.

“When that issue was investigated by the Select Committee on Competency, Accountability and Transparency (Selcat) in July 2012, Teng as the former chair of Selcat found no one guilty of misconduct and failed to establish procedures that would prevent the same problem from occurring again, and the problem has now indeed occurred again in MPSJ with the inclusion of the Skip highway in the Subang Jaya Local Plan.

“Back then in 2012, no officers were found guilty, despite an open admission by MBPJ town planning senior assistant director Faiwos Abd Hamid, that she implemented the changes to RTPJ2 on the instructions of her then town planning director Noraini Roslan.

“Such untrustworthy behaviour of the entire Selangor government on the RTPJ2 issue is yet again repeated to wedge the inclusion of the Skip highway, when the public was not even consulted,” Mak added.

He reiterated that Teng had resorted to making “irresponsible and dodgy statements” that Skip can be erased from the city plan if found to have “irregularities”, instead of investigating the matter. Mak said that removing Skip was not the point but to explain how Skip was inserted into the local plan in the first place without observing and complying with due process under the law.

“This is the basic tenet of good, effective, transparent and accountable governance,” he added.

He also urged the Selangor administration to set up strategic and systemic solutions to implement a transparent and accountable process to prevent similar incidents from recurring.

“If there is no punishment and no remedy to the process, the rakyat would have to forever be vigilant against such blatant abuses of power, and the promises Pakatan Rakyat made about being the vanguard against abuse of power and corruption would be little more than election propaganda,” he said.