Sheikh Moqhtar Kadir, chairman of a coalition against PJD Link, told FMT that residents around the proposed highway route have been living in “fear and anxiety” after developers PJD Link Sdn Bhd announced in January that work on the dual-carriage expressway would commence late this year.
Moqhtar said they had been unable to set up meetings with Selangor menteri besar Amirudin Shari and Petaling Jaya mayor Mohd Sayuthi Bakar for the past few months.
“A right of hearing must be given to us,” he said after a Zoom meeting hosted by Petaling Jaya MP Maria Chin Abdullah at her office here. “The developer was given this right for them to present their facts, so now, it’s only natural for us to be given that fairness to engage with the state, as well as the MB, to hear our side of the story.
“We’ve also been trying our level best to meet with the mayor but we’ve been unsuccessful.”
“They can’t just shut us down by saying ‘This is development goals’. Development goals must be sustainable and compatible with society.”
During the Zoom meeting, representatives of residents associations from SS20, SS21, Section 4, Section 11, Section 14, Section 17, Section 19, Section 20, Section 22, Section 51A and the Ehsan Ria Condominium in Section 11 voiced their opposition to the mega highway.
Apart from fears about losing their homes when PJD Link Sdn Bhd acquires land for the highway, Moqhtar also said residents and business owners were worried about plummeting property prices if their homes or businesses were located near the highway.
Moqhtar said residents are also concerned about the potential for serious accidents that may happen during the three-year construction period, citing recent accidents at highway construction sites in Kuala Lumpur as examples.
He said thousands of trees were likely to be chopped down.
Businesses in the area were unanimous in their assertion that PJD would bring an “unnecessarily enormous” amount of traffic to the area – along with carbon emissions, pollution, noise and the visual blight of an elevated highway.
Moqhtar also said traffic, social and environmental impact assessments for the projects had yet to be conducted.
Moqhtar’s concerns about transparency are not new.
Last September, Bukit Gasing assemblyman Rajiv Rishyakaran called upon PJD Link Sdn Bhd and the authority for highways to share all relevant information about PJD Link with Petaling Jaya residents.
“What we know is that PJD Link has met the state government and presented something. We are curious to know what it was,” he told FMT.
PJD Link Sdn Bhd executive director Amrish Hari Narayanan told media in January that the highway is expected to create 12,000 jobs and provide an estimated economic output of RM6.5 billion.
However Selayang MP William Leong, a Petaling Jaya resident since 1973, said conversations about economic growth were meaningless in this instance.
“We’ve missed the point when we talk about economic growth,” he told the meeting.
“If we’re talking about growth, who is making money? It’s the 1%.
“We are talking about our lives and the lives of our children. PJ is a very mature community and the older people, like me, have spent their life savings on a house. If you ask them to go, where can they go?
“This will break families apart, and there will be human cost and misery which you cannot measure. The money (compensation) can never be enough.
“Let’s not talk about money, let’s talk about our way of life.”