Thursday, March 26, 2009

Public hearing on Draft KL 2020 City Plan

I was invited to attend the above public hearing this morning at city hall building. The hearing was about 6 suggestions which I lodged last year. A city hall official started the hearing by introduced me as “a person who has objections” to Draft KL 2020 City Plan. Upon hearing that, I told the 3 hearing committees that I was invited to the hearing by city hall to give suggestions to the draft plan as correctly & clearly printed out by city hall on a name-plate placed on the table before me which read “Pemberi Cadangan”.
My suggestions range from the many existing green areas should be remained such, for e.g. Sg Penchala Malay village should be kept “green” as oppose to suggestion in the draft plan to develop the whole village, on why 3rd volume of the draft plan was not readied for the public even until now & please don’t insult the intelligence of the people by saying volume 3 is too comprehensive for public to understand as what has previously stated by a city hall spokesperson, the lack of public transportation plans in Segambut area namely, none was planned at Desa Partcity, Bandar Menjalara, Tm Sri Sinar, Tm Bukit Sri Bintang & Tm Prima Impian, insufficient lands are proposed to reserve for churches & for other religions in the draft plan and, to why there are many uncoloured maps in volume 2 as different colours were used in the draft plan to indicate the various proposed usage & density of an area.
All my suggestions/enquiries were duly noted by the 3 committees and I was told that I will be given a written reply later.
I stressed to the committees that the whole draft plan is built on the notion that in order for Kuala Lumpur to attain the status of a world class city, its population density has to be increased and to solve the “more people, more traffic & more chaos” issue, the draft plan relies on new rail lines & transit stations proposals. I pointed out to the committees if population is increased due to more high-rise housing projects yet the public transportation proposal fails to be implemented then the whole city plan is doomed & Kuala Lumpur will be in a mess. To make sure the plan will work, I suggested in the hearing that the authority must give some forms of guarantee to city folks that sufficient new public transportation system has to be readied before a new development is approved, maybe to do that in a phase by phase manner.

Lim Lip Eng

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