No land swap deal yet for Kulim airport, says MB
Mukhriz Mahathir says the application would be submitted only after land acquisition for the proposed airport is completed.
ALOR SETAR: No application has been submitted yet for development of the proposed Kulim International Airport, the state assembly was told today.
Menteri Besar Mukhriz Mahathir said no land-swap application had been sumitted by KXP AirportCity Holdings Sdn Bhd, the coordinator and operator of the proposed airport.
The application to the Kuala Muda District Land Office would be made only after the land acquisition process was completed.
“The land-swap process will only be carried out once the land title is issued to the developer,” he said in reply to Muhammad Sanusi Md Nor (PAS-Jeneri) who wanted to know if the land-swap exercise had been carried out for the project.
Mukhriz said KXP AirportCity had begun efforts to identify suitable parcels of land to replace the land gazetted as Malay reserve involved in the project.
Responding to Muhammad Sanusi’s supplementary question on the state government’s efforts to prevent the decrease in the size of Malay reserve land, Mukhriz said such a decrease did not happen in Kedah.
“There was no clear evidence of a decrease in the size of Malay reserve land because, in Kedah, the size is getting bigger.
“In every land-swap process for development in Kedah, the usual practice is to replace the affected Malay reserve land with another plot of land with an additional five per cent of the original size,” he said.
In reply to Dr Robert Ling Kui Ee (PH-Sidam), Mukhriz said the state government had never appointed any “surveyor” to conduct land survey work in the area which was to be developed by KXP and the High-Tech Park in Sidam.
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“The news had gone viral on social media that some parties had offered such services (of land survey work)… but that was done without the knowledge and approval of the state government,” he said.