The pitfalls of normal practice

Posted on 8 July 2012 - 07:55pm

R. Nadeswaran

SITTING through two hours of "testimony" at the public hearing of the Selangor Select Committee on Competence, Accountability and Transparency (Selcat) last Thursday was not an edifying exercise. There were bouts of anger interspersed with laughter. At times, there was this urge to stand up and expose the lies that were said to the five-person panel. They heard the confessions, the admissions and the methodology used. The hearing was in relation to illegal amendments to the Petaling Jaya Local Plan (RTPJ2).

Let's put the record straight. There's no love lost between the Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ) and this writer as I have for more than a decade been highlighting their shortcomings. I would be the last to defend the council. On the issue of the amendments to the local plan, let it be categorically stated that neither MBPJ nor its councillors had a hand in such despicable activities. They were carried out by individual employees, acting on their own volition, without authorisation or sanction from the council, its president or the councillors.

The litany of admissions and confessions was reflective of the attitude of council staff who believe that they do whatever they want and no one can question them. It also gives an inkling of the workings of local councils when major decisions are made arbitrarily without consultation.
Selcat chairman Datuk Teng Chang Khim did not mince his words when he remarked that MBPJ planners forgot about the rules and the provisions of the law and instead took their normal practices as guidelines.

The reference to "normal practice" is telling. Testifying on the changes made to the local plan after it was gazetted, former MBPJ town planning director Noraini Roslan described the changing of zoning after being gazetted as "amalan biasa". But what was even more significant was that officials from both MBPJ and the Selangor Town Planning Department organised a one-day meeting to carry out the changes unlawfully.

From the outset, Noraini, MBPJ senior assistant planning director Faiwos Abdul Hamid and deputy planning director Zain Azly Abdul Rahman admitted they participated in what was described as "macam bengkel" (like a workshop) to carry out the amendments. But what was astonishing was that there were no minutes of such an important exercise which lasted the whole of Jan 13.

Teng remarked that such important meetings to amend the zoning of a local plan should have had minutes. The (unauthorised) amendments, he said, were the main cause of public anger.

The imaginative mind can only come to the conclusion that all the participants were like children in kindergarten – provided with colour pencils and asked to shade anything and everything they felt comfortable with different colours. Yes, and this is what the perpetrators of the massive fraud wanted those in the public gallery to accept as the truth.

Zain went a step further to say that he used the Geographical Information System (GIS) to identify the plots of land for its zoning to be amended.
But you cannot use the status of the land in a title to change the zoning in the local plan which is based on sustainable development. There are no provisions in the law to make changes to the local plan after it is gazetted. Just because someone has a title with "commercial" on it, the local plan cannot be changed from "recreational" to satisfy the landowner.

Zoning, Teng rightly said, is the basis for the local plan in the first place. Residents want to know how the zoning will affect their property and whether anything (undesirable) will be built nearby.

It's a pity none of the panellists asked if the owner of the recreational land in SS7 in Kelana Jaya had approached any of them to have the local plan amended. That would have provided some information how the zoning of the land, owned by PKNS was changed overnight. Faiwos admitted that she implemented the changes to RTPJ2 on the instructions of her then director, Noraini. She also owned up to having transgressed the powers of the state executive committee and should not have amended the local plan after it was approved by the state.

"I handled it. But I did not purposely make the changes. I was following orders. Not just for the PKNS land but for the entire RTPJ2," she said.
When questioned by Selcat, Noraini, who was MBPJ urban planning director from Sept 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011, said she did not explicitly ask for amendments to be made but admitted that she did not stop the process of "correcting" the local plan.

So, what's going to happen next? Teng's preliminary recommendation is for the plan to be revoked as the process of gazetting the document was not done according to procedure.

"As far as the law is concerned, the RTPJ2 still stands as it had been gazetted. But the safest way is to revoke it, and re-gazetting the original version approved by the state executive council," he said.

So, what's happening to those involved? Having admitted to breaking the law, it is interesting to know what's going to happen to them. One or two are smirking, hoping a change in government at state level will exonerate their handiwork, as previously too, it was amalan biasa.

R. Nadeswaran hopes MBPJ and the state government do what the private sector does to its errant employees. He is editor (special and investigative reporting) at theSun and is reachable at:citizen-nades@thesundaily.com