SELANGOR executive councillor Izham Hashim has admitted that officials in the state, including district officers, were too inexperienced to handle the massive floods that had occurred in December.

The state infrastructure and agriculture committee chairman said people involved in the flood operations had no experience in handling such a situation.

“For instance, the district officer for Hulu Langat was from the Housing and Local Government Ministry.

“She had been a district officer for less than three months, so we couldn’t expect much,” he told The Malaysian Insight.

His admission comes just as Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob blamed the Selangor government for a lack of preparation and chaos among rescuers in the floods, which wreaked havoc across the country’s most populous state last month.

Izham said some of the officers who were involved in the operations were stuck on highways while others were stranded in their water-hit homes.

“There were front-liners whose houses were affected by the floods and their concerns were different at that point of time. I can’t blame them.

“With the lack of manpower, there was nothing much that could have been done when we predicted 180mm of rainfall, but it turned out to be more than 400mm,” he said.

Izham said that the Malaysian Meteorological Department (MetMalaysia) should have also issued a harsher warning on the flood situation.

“Every year, there is a warning from MetMalaysia, so it should have given a more stern warning for December,” he said.

Last month, Selangor Menteri Besar Amirudin Shari said they were prepared for the floods but the unusually high precipitation over the 48-hour period disrupted contingency plans.

He said state representatives at the district level had already met in November and begun groundwork for the rainy season.

Amirudin also denied that the state had failed to plan for the floods as Selangor braced itself for rainfall of between 60mm-100mm.

“The unexpected downpour in Selangor caught federal and state authorities off guard and unprepared,” he had said.

Rainfall in the span of those 48 hours was 400mm, which was higher than the average for the entire month of November (250-370mm), while 200-300mm was forecast for December.

Izham also said that the response from the federal government was slow.

“On Saturday (December 18) evening we discussed in our WhatsApp group with Amirudin to contact the federal government to assist us.

“But they only took action late Sunday evening when they should have reacted immediately and not waited until the victims were starving,” he said.

Heavy rainfall before and over the weekend of December 18-19 caused massive flooding in several states, including Selangor, Malacca, Negri Sembilan, Perak and Pahang.

The floods had displaced more than 70,000 people at its height and killed 55. Selangor was one of the worst-hit states where thousands had to be evacuated.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Abdul Latiff Ahmad, who oversees the National Disaster Management Agency, responded to flak by saying it was only a federal-level agency that helped to coordinate the different agencies responsible for providing aid.

Subsequently, Amirudin and Selangor National Security Council (NSC) chairman Noh Omar disagreed about their respective jurisdictions within the state NSC. – January 21, 2022.