Malay Mail report 23rd October 2009

ONE month. That's the time frame given by Kuala Lumpur mayor Datuk Ahmad Fuad yesterday to Medan Damansara residents to submit a memorandum if they want to put a halt once and for all work on the Medan Damansara 21 project.

City Hall, meanwhile, will not be making any decision as to whether the project proceeds or not — choosing instead to pass the final decision-making to the Federal Territories Ministry after the one month is up.

This was announced during a meeting between City Hall officials, a technical consultant from the Public Works Institute of Malaysia (Ikram) and Medan Damansara residents at the Bukit Damansara Community Hall yesterday.

Ahmad Fuad said that City Hall will prepare a Cabinet paper and include the memorandum, along with other documents submitted by residents, to be submitted to the ministry.

“Something must be done without further delay. However, it is not easy for us to make a decision at this juncture as we do not want to be seen as siding with either the developer or the residents.

“If the FT Ministry is also unable to come to a decision, we will persuade them to push the decision to the Cabinet.”

Ahmad Fuad said that residents must be practical and live with the fact that the damage was done.

“Now, it's time to find a solution to the problem at hand. Residents can continue to question and challenge who was at fault. But in the meantime, no decision has been reached and the hillslope can collapse again at any time.”

Residents raised several questions with City Hall, chief among them being why development was first allowed on hillslopes with a gradient of over 35 degrees.

Meanwhile, Ikram spokesman, Mohd Taufik Haron from its forensics unit, explained to residents the technical details it had garnered from its analyses of the hillslopes making up the proposed development area.

Regardless of whether development works had taken place at the hillslopes or not, he said that residents
— especially those living at Lorong Setiapuspa 1, 2 and 3 - were living in a hillslide potential area as the hillslopes behind their homes were in the gradient range of over 45 degrees, going well into the 60-degree range.

The analyses on the cross-sections of the hill-slopes also revealed that their factor of safety (FOS) were below 1.4, the minimum mark imposed on hillslope developments in the country.

Medan Damansara Residents' Association secretary, Peter Raiappan, in addressing Ahmad Fuad, said that residents will prepare a memorandum as advised.

On Monday, Malay Mail reported that Medan Damansara residents will find out whether the disputed Damansara 21 project will continue or be shelved when the project developer meets with City Hall for a briefing.

Residents claim that the high-end development — which would feature 21 luxury bungalows, priced between RM10 million and RM15 million each — is unsafe.

The association has argued that the slope gradient is unsuitable for a development of such a scale.

Their fears stem from incidents such as one on June 11 last year, when an uprooted tree at the site fell and pierced through the roof of a house, damaging the master bedroom.

A landslip on Aug 26 last year caused the collapse of a retaining wall separating the project and nearby homes. A second landslip the next day caused extensive damage to the kitchen of another home. Two families were subsequently asked to evacuate after the Fire and Rescue Department identified their homes as being of high risk.

Following the Dec 6 Bukit Antarabangsa tragedy, which killed six people and saw 14 houses destroyed, the FT Ministry issued a stop-work order on the Damansara 21 project.