PKNS Field – Where are the Answers?

By admin-s On Apr 29, 2015

So now we have two legally binding documents produced by the Selangor government that allow for two contradictory outcomes that do not concern the developer Melati Ehsan Holdings Bhd because their argument is that the project either be allowed to proceed or compensate them directly as per the signed joint venture agreement.

Mak Khuin Weng

Datuk Teng Chang Khim recently admonished me for ‘twisting’ facts on the PKNS field. To him, the case is closed and the project will not proceed because the Selangor Special Select Committee on Competency, Accountability and Transparency (Selcat) had decreed it so.

In my initial letter, I stated the possibility of the project proceeding through threat of being sued for huge sums of money because the Selangor State Development Corporation (PKNS) had signed a joint venture agreement to develop the land.

Well, according to the Edge Markets yesterday, the project is still alive and valued at RM1.62 billion, with the PKNS standing to net about RM1 billion to RM1.2 billion in profits. The land title given for the field does indeed state the use for the land as commercial, which is a contradiction with what the RTPJ2 zoned the land for (green space).

Wong Chen believes the compensation could be as high as 70% of RM1.2 billion, which is RM840 million.

What I had feared would happen have now come to pass, and the Petaling Jaya City Council’s (MBPJ) recently announced decision to reject the project outright is of no comfort.

And make no mistake; this issue is very much Pakatan’s blunder. What I had not revealed in my previous letter was the sequence of events for this issue. The field had been around since the 1970s but was never given a land title.

Kelana Jaya residents were not too perturbed either then because they were told via a letter from the Land Office that the land would be a green space and any land title issued would reflect that status, but when the title was actually issued in 1998, the field was given a ‘commercial’ use designation without explanation.

Several attempts were made to develop it since then, but it was always resisted by the local residents. In late 2007, BN sought to correct the issue by proposing to zone the land as a green space and residents did not object to this. PKNS too, despite having those land titles, did not object at the time.

Of course, PR took over Selangor in 2008 and the RTPJ2 was forgotten for awhile. It was only around late 2010 the local plan was discussed again and it was finally gazetted on 13 Jan 2011 with the field shown as green space.

This land title nonsense was known – and the residents of Kelana Jaya were pro-active enough to engage BN to resolve the issue. So long as the land title was under PKNS, the Selangor government had final say on whether to develop it or not and could eventually resolve the conflicting documents internally without additional burdensome cost. This is no longer the case since PKNS signed the joint venture agreement.

And PKNS signed this joint venture agreement on 28 Jan 2011, two weeks AFTER RTPJ2 was gazetted. The Selcat hearing also discovered that MBPJ sent to print an illegally modified version of RTPJ2 to show the park zoned as commercial space on 15 Aug 2011.

So now we have new questions about the conduct of the politicians and government officials who were party to this mess. Who were the signatories? What exactly was discussed at state government level and at PKNS? What was Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim’s role in this mess?

Does the present Selcat chairperson Hannah Yeoh want to reopen this case again and help ask the relevant people all those questions? Or are we to believe that Selcat has completed its duties on this matter and this issue is closed?

Finally, I would like to call out Wong Chen to express my gratitude for his efforts because he appears to be the only politician doing something about this issue openly.