Friday, April 06, 2007

Land clearing brings gloom to flood-prone TTDI Jaya

For those who moved into the neighborhood of Taman TTDI Jaya in the “planned” city of Shah Alam 15 years ago, little did they realize that it would be a non-ending nightmare of recurrent flooding.

The trust they had in the developers and all those promises that the land had been adequately raised to sustain a 100-year rain forecast obviously in retrospect was nothing more then a “con” to entice innocent house buyers to part with their hard-earned money to buy these homes. Worse affected were the shop-owners who today have to face floods almost on a monthly basis. How is this possible?

Despite all the technical explanations by the developers, DID, MBSA and the Menteri Besar himself it appears plain to anyone with common sense that the area indeed is topographically the lowest point in the entire locality and water undoubtedly whether from the area itself or drainage upstream from KL would indeed overflow and stagnate at this Taman.

After the horrific floods of last year, the State government came up with an interim plan to raise the river bunds to prevent overflowing but the floods keep coming with even greater speed.

You see, despite knowing that this place is already flood prone, the area between TTDI Jaya, Bukit Jelutong and the TUDM air force base has been stripped bare to make way for industrial development.

The entire area does not possess proper drains and even a kid will tell you the massive run off during heavy rain will of course pool at this housing estate located beneath – Taman TTDI Jaya.

But this common sense appears to have slipped through the minds of authorities who allowed this massive land clearing without a thought to parents, the infirm, children, businesses and schools who occupy this housing estate.

Is this just plain negligence, or even deliberate with a touch of sadism on the part of the MBSA? It is not possible that the MBSA who seem to know this area well would not know this simple detail.

But nothing in Malaysia surprises anyone anymore, for our institutions are clearly staffed with incompetent personnel with very much a third world mind-set.

The country as acknowledged widely is rudderless.

Whoever approved this massive land clearing for these industries without first safeguarding the lives of the people downstream must be irrational, unsound or quite possibly paid off.

Whoever it was, at most he/she would be transferred. But for the people who need to face these repeated calamities the nightmares continue.

How an elected government can ignore such incompetence to inflict such profound damage – repeatedly, to its very own people is unbelievable.

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