GEORGE TOWN: At least 18 highrise residential projects including seven to be built on hillslopes, are in various stages of being approved in Penang, a DAP lawmaker said.
Tanjung Bungah assemblyman Teh Yee Cheu said the project sites were between Tanjung Bungah and Batu Ferringhi,
He said some of these projects would be built on slopes steeper than the site where a landslide killed 11 people at the 50-storey affordable housing project which was under construction in Lengkok Lembah Permai, Tanjung Bungah here.
In the Saturday’s landslide, a Malaysian was among the 11 buried alive. All bodies of the victims have been found after three days of search and rescue mission.
Speaking to the New Straits Times, Teh said of the seven projects on hillslopes, at least six of them were expected to begin works soon.
"One of them is in Tanjung Bungah involving a 40-storey building which is about 15m above the sea level.
"I have protested agianst all these projects but I don't think it will be heeded, just like how the authorities bulldozed through with the affordable housing project, where the landslide occured.
"It will be a matter of time before the authorities forget about the landslide and approve all these projects," he said.
Teh believed that the authorities had yet to fully grasp the severity of the landslide as they merely cited it as a "construction site accident".
"It looks like when they are in power, they will just make up any excuse to be 'developer-friendly'," he said.
He hoped that the Penang government would freeze all highrise development projects on hillslopes.
He reiterated that the draft Local Plan be gazetted soon as property owners could find development projects unexpectedly being approved in their neighbourhood if the plan was not legally binding,