GEORGE TOWN: “How many more innocent lives must we lose before serious measures are taken by the state to prevent hillslope tragedies?”
This was the immediate response of Sahabat Alam Malaysia (Sam) honorary secretary R. Meenakshi following a landslide at the Bukit Kukus paired-road project site this afternoon, which has so far claimed two lives.
One person was rescued, while 10 others are feared buried under rubble after tonnes of earth came crashing down onto their container homes in the 1.50pm incident.
Meenakshi said the landslide in Tanjung Bungah last year, which claimed 11 lives, should have served as a lesson to all.
“However, today, we are shocked with yet another landslide incident. This is not a normal tragedy.
“What else can we say? When we speak out against hillslope development projects, we are labelled as ‘troublemakers’. But look at what happened today.
“More innocent lives are lost. This is so, so sad,” she said when met at the site.
Meenakshi called for all ongoing hillslope development projects to be halted pending an investigation into today’s incident.
“All new hillslope development projects should (in fact) be scrapped.
“We have lost faith in how the authorities handle all this. They continue to allow such tragedies to happen,” she said, adding that the cause of the Oct 21 Tanjung Bungah landslide has yet to be ascertained.
Meanwhile, Penang Forum member Dr Lim Mah Hui said the latest tragedy illustrates the risk involved when one “tampers with nature.”
“What happened today showed that the (state’s) monitoring capacity is weak. The state government should not say that this is (just) a worksite tragedy.
“This should serve as the final wake up call,” he said.
Soil expert Dr Kam Suan Peng said they had raised concerns over the Bukit Kukus development project with the state government on two occasions.
“We were told that this is an infrastructure construction and that monitoring is being conducted.
“(But) there have been two incident in two weeks. If they are really (doing) monitoring, then I am puzzled that this happened.
“If you look at Bukit Kukus, the hillslope (appears to have been) exposed for the past two to three years. In fact, the massive flood last November brought soil (down) to the road and created many ‘waterfalls’,” she said.
Kam called for the authorities to pay serious attention this time around.