Its secretary, Hng Chee Wei criticised Chow’s slow reaction to the flash floods issue as he had only now asked the Penang Island City Council (MBPP) to present its plans on hillside and riverside development.
“To ask the relevant authorities to identify hillside development is not enough and not effective as no surveillance is being conducted to keep an eye on the projects.
“Such projects can cause landslides and high water flow to stream downstream, hence causing floods at lower ground areas,” he told a press conference here today.
Hng said that on Nov 17 last year, Chow had said that in a span of seven years, the state had approved 56 hillside developments and identified 68 illegal land clearing sites in the state.
However, based on the 2015 Auditor-General’s Report, there were 300 cases of illegal land clearing carried out in a span of three years.
“I believe that Chow should give more attention to the hill clearing issue and list down all the hillside projects that have been approved by the state government for the people to see,” he said.
He also questioned why the state government kept claiming that the recurring flash floods were due to a lack of funding for flood mitigation projects.
“From 2011 till 2015, RM38 million has been provided by the state to combat floods and Chow had said that some extra RM100 million had been given by developers.
“This does not include funds from 2008 to 2010. But today, after hundreds of million given, we are still experiencing brown coloured floods,” he said.
Yesterday, Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng said that the state needed more funding from the Federal Government in order to start five flood mitigation projects worth RM997 million to combat floods in the state.
He said the federal government had only made a partial approval for the Sungai Pinang flood mitigation project worth RM150 million.
The other flood mitigation projects were in Sungai Juru, Sungai Perai, Bayan Lepas and Lembangan Sungai Jawi which have not received any funding so far.