We were featured in the Singapore Straits Times

Debate over hillslope project revived By Hazlin Hassan, Malaysia Correspondent

KUALA LUMPUR: When retired government servant Peter Raiappan bought his home in a middle-class suburb in 1970, the hillslope overlooking his backyard was filled with trees.

Today, the trees are gone and the slope in the Medan Damansara estate in Kuala Lumpur is being turned into a bungalow retreat for the rich.

'When we bought the houses, the developer then had showed us a plan of the area. The hill was marked as a green lung and we were assured that it would not be developed,' the 65-year-old told The Straits Times.

Four of the residents, including Mr Raiappan, are being sued by the developer of the Damansara 21 project for protesting against its planned development.

The issue highlights the current anger against projects built on slopes, following a recent landslide that killed four people and turned life topsy-turvy for thousands of others in the neighbouring state of Selangor.

The 21 bungalows being built in the Damansara 21 project will each come with a swimming pool.

Each house costs between RM10 million and RM15 million (S$4.1 million and S$6.2 million). The project is being developed by SDB Properties; it paid RM50 million for the land.

The developer, in a statement issued in September, said it 'continues to stand by its commitment to ensure that all works in the project will be carried out in a proper manner, in full compliance with all conditions imposed by the relevant authorities and with the residents' safety in mind'.

The area's municipal authority, Kuala Lumpur City Hall, had said that the land was private property and not a designated green lung and all relevant authorities had given the green light for the project to go ahead.

Work started last December. Earlier this year, nearly 20 residents from Medan Damansara knocked on the doors of the Anti-Corruption Agency in Putrajaya to hand over papers alleging corruption on the part of KL City Hall when it allowed the developer permission to build on the slope.

The developers filed a defamation suit against four of the residents association's office bearers in their personal capacity at the High Court three months ago.

Besides Mr Raiappan, those sued are association president P. Subhakaran, former association president Abdul Shukor Abdullah and Mr Randhir Singh.

Following the deadly landslide in Bukit Antarabangsa a week ago, the government has halted the Damansara 21 project pending a review.

But Mr Singh said that it is not good enough and they want the government to scrap the development. 'We will challenge the suit. The project is a monster staring at us. We fear for our safety and we have the right to speak up for it,' he said.

But many developers felt the Bukit Antarabangsa incident had caused all of them to be painted unfairly.

Mr Eddy Chen, chairman of The Hillslope Development Task Force of the Real Estate and Housing Developers' Association, said banning all hillslope projects was not the way out.

'A blanket ban on all hillslope developments is not a sustainable long-term answer,' he wrote in a column in The Edge, a financial newspaper, yesterday.

He said that more stringent rules for the maintenance of slopes and the holistic involvement of all relevant parties in adhering to a slope-safety management and warning system was more important.