Selangor DOE to announce EIA report first before cemetery project

With reference to the decision of Majlis Perbandaran Subang Jaya to go ahead with the project of constructing a cemetery in Saujana Puchong, we will put forward an official demand to MPSJ to announce the EIA report for the project and request MPSJ to stop construction before the report is released to the public.

Although MPSJ President PSJ president Mohd Arif Rahman is adamant that the project will take off later this year as planned.

He mentioned that the layout of the project is ready and work will start sometime this year. Around 32 acres (13 hectares) of the 55-acre (22-hectare) land will be allocated for the Muslim burial ground according to Malay Mail on Monday.

According to Environmental Quality Act 1974, Environmental Impact Accessment Section 6(A), conversion of hill forest land to other land use covering an area of 50 hectares or more is required to have an EIA report to be approved by the Minister of Environment before the project is approved and take off.

The affected area is a 3000-hectare forest reserve with 55-hectare of it will be converted to a public cemetery (see map below) with crematorium - touted to be the biggest of its kind in the country. The cemetery will occupy a sizeable portion of the forest reserve presently owned by Universiti Pertainian Malaysia (UPM) for research purposes.

According to the residents, the 3,000 hectare reserve is among the few remaining lowland forests in the country. It acts as a green lung and is also home to an Orang Asli community.

It is believed that the project, which comes long with the construction of a crematorium, will definitely pose impacts to the environment but to date there is yet any announcement on the content of the EIA Report, causing much confusions on how serious are the environmental impacts.