GEORGE TOWN: The Penang draft local plan 2030 should be scrapped because it was drafted without public participation, an activist has urged the state government.
In a memorandum to the chief minister, former consumer advocate Ravinder Singh said the Town and Country Planning Act 1976 called for full public participation at the preparatory stage.
However, many Penangites had remained unaware of the plan which he described as being thrust upon them. He said the plan might be against the spirit of town planning laws as it was not done in consultation with Penangites.
The draft local plan permanently sets density limits, zoning and other development measures for the next 10 years. Civil society groups have said the plan is riddled with errors and has too many areas marked for commercial use. They described the high-density allowances as alarming.
Ravinder, who is with Parti Rakyat Malaysia, said the Town and Country Planning Act 1976 calls for public participation in preparing a draft local plan, even before the draft is made public.
However, Penangites were being forced to accept the draft plan, although the law required a bottom-up process, where local input is first required. The Penang Island City Council should have adequately publicised the plan before making the draft plan public, he said.
“If the preparation of the draft plan was done in a hush-hush way, where only a few selected persons were made aware of its preparation, then what is being put out now should be considered invalid and scrapped,” he said in a memorandum to the chief minister and city council.
“The public is generally not literate about local plans and the processes involved. It is therefore not right for the authorities to take advantage of the public’s ignorance and force ‘development’ on them which they do not consent to.
“Planning should be to meet the needs of the people in given areas, not to impose upon them the ‘needs’ of others, including the state. Development must be needs-based, not desires based,” he said.
Referring to a promise by the state government in 2008, Ravinder questioned why land at the turf club appeared to have been rezoned for mixed development, which could possibly see projects the size of seven Komtars being built there.
Komtar is the site of an 11-hectare urban renewal development in the middle of George Town which houses a commercial centre and offices of the state government and federal government agencies in the 65-storey tower, one of the tallest skyscrapers in Malaysia.
Ravinder said the draft plans on display showed many instances of incoherence, discrepancies and lack of information, including maps showing school buildings in the sea.
Public viewing of the Penang Draft Local Plan (Island) 2030, which was supposed to end on Dec 13, has been extended to Jan 10 by the island city council.
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