PENANG Forum, the most vocal civil group against the state’s decision to build more roads and continue hill-slope developments, has demanded a public investigation into the fatal Bukit Kukus landslide. 

The group also wants to be part of any state or federal panel investigating the Bukit Kukus fatal landslide in Paya Terubong. 

Penang Forum representative Khoo Salma Nasution asked that the authorities include at least two Penang Forum members – an engineer and a lawyer – in such a panel. 

She said Penang Forum’s Penang Hills Watch, which has time and again alerted the authorities to hill clearing, should be invited as an observer to such operations and not bound by secrecy laws. 

“For the interest of transparency, members of such commissions should also not be bound by secrecy laws. 

“All minutes and notes (of the investigation) should be made public by the authorities,” she said this morning at a gathering to show solidarity for the victims of the landslide in front of City Hall. 

A landslide last Friday at a road construction project owned by the Penang Island City Council (MBPP) killed nine foreign labours. 

Since the tragedy, there had been revelations of a water source being blocked on the hill without proper diversion, and non-compliance in terms of erosion and sedimentation controls.

The state’s Ops Lumpur task force discovered the non-compliance earlier this month. 

The issues highlighted monitoring and enforcement weaknesses at construction sites by the authorities and the project consultant that is supposed to do self-checks. 

Salma asked how MBPP itself could fail to check problems at its own road project.

“Was Ops Lumpur set up to overcome the problem of silo jurisdiction of the local authority, Drainage and Irrigation Department, Public Works Department, Department of Environment, district engineers and officers, and so forth? And if so, why did it fail to check the problems found on MBPP’s own project site? 

“We demand that the minutes of meetings and reports by Ops Lumpur be declassified.”

Earlier this week, the state government announced the setting up of a special committee headed by Deputy Chief Minister I Ahmad Zakiyuddin Abdul Rahman to investigate the tragedy. 

Asked about Penang Forum’s request for transparency, and to be included in the investigation, Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow said the committee will conduct an internal probe.

“The committee is not a commission of inquiry. But we will consider the request,” he said at the opening of the Institution of Engineers Malaysia’s (IEM) Penang branch office at E-Gate.

He said IEM’s state chairman, Ting Chek Choon, and incoming chairman Yau Ann Nian will both join the special committee.

“The state government looks forward to wider collaborations with the pool of talent within IEM Penang in many projects in the pipeline.

“IEM Penang was among the professional bodies and parties that came up with the hill-land development guidelines many years ago, after the Bukit Antarabangsa landslide in Selangor.

“Since then, they have been assisting and extending their expertise to many parties, including the state, during disasters like the Penang Hill funicular train breakdown and the accident at the Penang Umno building,” he said in his speech earlier.

The Umno building’s fin wall, weighing about 200 tonnes, collapsed in a storm in June 2013.

It came down on a passing car, burying the vehicle and its driver, whose body was never recovered.

A lorry driver also died in the freak accident. – October 26, 2018.