He said in a statement today that the authorities could not preserve villages without addressing the requirements of modernity.

Ramasamy blasted Umno elected representatives for saying that the Penang Government was not doing enough to protect and preserve traditional villages, describing their protestations as “sandiwara” (drama).

He charged that when the Umno-led Barisan Nasional was in power, it paid little attention to protecting traditional villages but now they were using it as a weapon to embarrass the Pakatan Harapan government.

He said: “Traditional villages should be preserved to some extent. However in the age of modernisation and commercialisation such preservation has its limits.

“From the point of view of protecting heritage there is a need to do this. But at the same time the need to build modern houses with modern amenities would make it difficult and not feasible to protect villages that might not be villages in the traditional sense.”

He observed that many human settlements, although called villages, are not villages in the traditional sense as they have embraced modernity with all its features.

“Villages can be protected but it would be impossible to reproduce them as they existed 50 or 100 years ago. Even if the physical infrastructure could be maintained it would be impossible to take the dwellers back in time to their traditional roles.

“BN has a bad record in Penang in terms of protecting traditional villages immaterial of the nationality. Many villages were sold for the emergence of urban concrete jungle.”

He said while preserving kampungs or traditional villages might be enticing superficially, even nostalgic, the issue was a lot more complex.