The following article was featured recently in FMT. It certainly deserves more airing because it underscores how shameful is the frenzied pace of development in Penang and the toll the rakyat has to pay. Syabas to Mata Kuching for this well-written piece. We need more like him to voice our concerns!
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Penangites grow restless with building frenzy
The whole island had been declared a city but the council is yet to implement its latest local plan, which speaks volumes on the standard of state governance.
GEORGE TOWN: An ever-growing number of Penangites are becoming disgruntled with the frenzied pace of development for the past seven years under the Pakatan Rakyat state government.
These Penang thoroughbreds, including some backbenchers, are increasingly frustrated and disappointed as the current Pakatan government shows no sign of looking into socio-economic development befitting the aspiration of local residents.
It would not be an overstatement to say the Pakatan government has no vision, no insight, and most importantly no blueprint: no structural or local plans for organised, systematic, environment-friendly, human-friendly and heritage-friendly development.
The heritage that is the soul of Penang, is not protected as the state government drags its feet on implementing the Special Heritage Area Plan and the revised as well as an updated state structural plan and city local plan.
The whole island had been declared a city but the council is yet to implement its latest local plan, which speaks volumes on the standard of state governance.
Yet many Penangites remain unperturbed, except for some concerned citizens, because they are not as well-informed — or perhaps because they are busy looking for more details of a certain murdered Mongolian woman.
They can hardly realise that without proper plans in place, no government could possibly carry out socio-development policies to meet residents’ desires.
They fail to see that the lack of these plans allows the state government to implement policies at its own whims and fancies, as is happening now.
Hill forest lands, including gazetted water catchment areas, are being cleared illegally for some mega projects. Heritage structures are being torn down illegally for similar reasons. Traffic in parts of the city is choking and public transportation is nowhere near being efficient, reliable or affordable enough for all.
Local residents, who provide the meaning and fundamental dynamism to the term intangible or living heritage, are being slowly but surely wiped out from the Unesco heritage area in George Town city.
The state government has not built, and probably never will build, affordable and comfortable lower-cost houses to cater to the dire needs of lower- income people and seem keen only to approve mega housing projects for the rich and the elite.
Perhaps the state has conducted a study and found that the rich and the elite have housing needs much greater and more urgent than poorer Penangites.
Some critics are inclined to feel that the sudden surge of property prices in Penang to exorbitant levels, especially on the island, was deliberately allowed to happen, to chase out lower income islanders.
Perhaps Penang had entered the golden era of governance for developers, by developers and with developers.
Developers escape with token fines after illegally clearing hill forest land and demolishing heritage structures. The state government claims that a court fine of between RM6,000 and RM50,000 and a four-year delay in planning permission for a property project would be deterrent enough to punish an irresponsible developer and other aspirants.
But this claim is unfounded: the state’s lame duck enforcement of the law has encouraged errant developers to carry out more and more unlawful actions.
It is learnt that a heritage building in Jalan Anson would soon be torn down, with or without a council work commencement certificate, to make way for another high-rise residential building.
At the recent state assembly, an unidentified developer was said to have been illegally carrying out massive clearing of hill forests in a water catchment area on Bukit Laksamana in Teluk Bahang for a hill resort project.
It is shocking that this is happening not under the watch of the Barisan Nasional, which ruled the state government previously, but under the DAP.
Penangites had overwhelmingly backed the DAP and its partners in Pakatan Rakyat in two general elections to move away from what they perceived as incompetent governance by BN, for a real change to good, just and fair governance by a people-orientated government.
But the current state of affairs, under a state government which trumpets its CAT principles of competence, accountability and transparency, seems to be worse.
Unscrupulous zoning and rezoning of a development area take place with a stroke of a pen: suddenly a 40-storey or even 50-storey building is erected in the midst of a housing area of double-storey terraces.
Gurney Drive, Pulau Tikus, Tanjung Tokong, Tanjung Bungah and Batu Ferringhi are among those areas that have been badly affected: for example, a 20-storey commercial and residential tower will soon appear on a small open area of 1,353.35 square metres. As high density buildings mushroom all over, Gurney Drive is set to be the bad model for traffic congestion in the city.
Over the seven years under the Pakatan state government, Penangites have seen one high-end high-rise commercial and housing project after another, and constant politicking about national affairs and the Federal Government.
Pakatan leaders love to indulge in BN-bashing, to stoke the people’s anger and frustration against the Federal Government.
For Pakatan’s political survival, the strategy seems to be “attack one’s enemy to camouflage one’s weaknesses from public view”, and the current Pakatan state government relies heavily on whacking BN weaknesses rather than showing off its own strengths. Perhaps there is not much to show.
Critics and journalists have been threatened and slapped with libel suits to shut their mouths, yet Pakatan leaders brag on the public stage as advocates and stout defenders of freedom of expression.
Penang’s active non-governmental organisations (NGOs), once stout defenders of human rights, now hardly lift a finger against Pakatan: it’s not surprising, as the NGOs’ agenda has been to smack BN at all costs in every possible way. The truth is that these NGOs are tacit defenders and promoters of Pakatan.
The majority of Penangites have backed Pakatan because they hate BN more. As long they remain caught in anti-BN hysteria, the Pakatan government will continue to flatter to deceive, capitalising on their blind support to favour unscrupulous and irresponsible socio-economic development policies at the whims and fancies of a coterie of leaders.
By the time Penangites wake up, will anything be left of the erstwhile Pearl of the Orient?
Written by Mata Kuching, the pseudonym of a Penangite and FMT reader
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