Rosli Omar
Posted: 18 March 2021
The townhall meeting was held 29 September 2020 at a Pulau Carey resort, organised by the Selangor Environment Exco Hee Loy Sian. This was to hear the response from the public concerning the proposed degazettement of the Kuala Langat North Forest Reserve (KLNFR, or Hutan Simpan Kekal Langat Utara, HSKLU) by the Selangor Mentri Besar (Chief Minister). See the previous post on the background of this issue.
Some 45,000 people signed a petition against the proposed degazettement. According to Exco Hee, 80 people have been called to present their objections in person. How these 80 were selected was not explained. Also, Non-Governmental Organisations, NGOs, who put in objections were also invited. But quite a few complained that they did not receive the invitation. They were told about the meeting by others and decided to come anyway.
When I arrived about 8 am with Leela Panikar of TrEES, there was a big drama with many people not allowed in. There was a big contingent of Orang Asli living in villages next to KLNFR that were stuck at the resort entrance. They of course have a big issue with the forest being threaten with destruction for development. The organisers have made a rule that only one representative from each NGO would be allowed in. Because of that I agreed to represent Sahabat Alam Malaysia, SAM, because they could not make it. I usually volunteers with TrEES.
Colin Nicholas of the Centre for Orang Asli Concerns, COAC, telephoned Exco Hee and told him, if you don’t want to see on social media of the empty townhall but loads of people at the resort entrance he’d better let in everybody. That did the trick, the gate was open to everyone. A day before Hee was complaining to the media that a different group of the public was supposed to turn up for the townhall meeting but did not. It would not look good to again have an empty hall with Orang Asli and others stuck at the gate.
Exco Hee Loy Sian, chairing the meeting
The meeting started with opening remarks from Exco Hee. Each representative was allowed 5 minutes.
I was third in the queue, after the Pelindung Khazanah Alam (PEKA) President, Sharifah Sabrina Syed Akil. She passionately asked for KLNFR to be conserved, and enough of uncontrolled development at the expense of forests and green areas. She got a lot of applause.
I responded first to Hee’s remarks. He said KLNFR would be replaced with three separate areas that, in sum, were bigger than KLNFR. I said three separate areas were not the same as as one solid area. They are of smaller area each and thus subject to limitation of food and mating partners for the wildlife. The lack of mating partners would lead to inbreeding and genetic diseases and the likely eventual extinction.
I mentioned too the inherent conflict of interest in the degazettement process: the Mentri Besar asks for degazettement of KLNFR on behalf of the developer, Mentri Besar Incorporated (together with Titian Jutaria, linked to Selangor royalty), of which he is the head. He then via his Environment Exco determines whose complains he will entertain at the townhall meeting, and then has the final say whether the degazettement goes ahead or not, whatever the public response is.
To my observation, nobody who spoke at the meeting was in favour of degazettement. That’s how unpopular the degazettement proposal was.
