The premier said “Enough”, after seeing the Bukit Antarabangsa landslide and hearing about the four fatalities.

But my question to him and the federal government is whether mere words from the PM are enough to prevent such tragedies?

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Dr Benjamin George, a survivor of the Highlands Towers incident was recently quoted as saying: “The politicians will climb up their helicopters and say all development must stop. There will be a stop-work order for two months but in the third month the tractors will start work again. I have lived long enough to see all this nonsense repeated.”

George is an 80-year-old plastic surgeon who still lives in the vicinity in spite of losing two of his holdings. He believes that the “authorities” do not have the political will to stop the problem.

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I attended the first multi-stakeholder dialogue on hillslope development moderated by Selangor Menteri Besar Khalid Ibrahim recently. Others included journalists, representatives of NGOs, residents’ associations and developers, as well as local councillors and specialists of all leanings.

The objective of this ‘townhall meeting’, according to Khalid, was “to allow all stakeholders to convince others what is really in the public interest”.

Developers generally made the argument that “hillslope development like that in Hong Kong and Acapulco, Mexico” can be undertaken in Malaysia. It is technically possible to develop and design hill-slopes, they said.

My only argument at that meeting and again now is the central thesis of Prof SH Nasr in his rather small book entitled, ‘Man and Nature: The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man’, first delivered in 1969 at the University of Chicago Lectures.

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The problem of development today is that our concept of such ‘progress’ is conceived only in materialistic terms.

The community and environmental quality are treated as secondary. Such a definition measures only material growth – in our case, a ‘world-class city’ or ‘developed state’.

It appears that FF Schumacher’s ‘Small is Beautiful’ thesis is forgotten. Today’s definition of mainstream development is ‘the bigger the better’ or ‘the more expensive, the more impressive’ – leading to money in the pockets of developers and those who collude with them.

Whether it involves developers or town planners, planning is today only based on very short-term perspectives of costs and benefits, and often only measured in monetary investments.

A specific argument used by the developers was that they had to recover their costs (holding and investment costs) for all lands already bought and held by them; and it so happens much of the under-developed or undeveloped land is now on hillslopes.

Journalists and residents’ associations asked if the facts and figures could be revealed, including what was paid for processing and approvals of these hillslope projects. But there was a distinct quiet on the subject.

Long-terms sustainability

The most pertinent questions relate to the legality and basic mental attitude and worldview of the developers, their colluding planners and approving authorities.

Is there any consideration or concern at all in all such projects for the long-term sustainability and beauty of hillslopes or even the ergonomics of the area? Do their benefit-cost analyses factor in the social cost and responsibility of the developers 50 years from now?

For instance, when the developers and planners of Taman Bukit Mewah, Taman Bukit Jaya, Puncak Athenaeum condominium, and Wangsa Height condominium approached the development of these high-cost and high-density development, did any of them think of the ‘non-sustainability’ of such development in the long term?

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Didn’t the local authority consider the slope as too steep and too flimsy to sustain such development? Didn’t the buyers understand the risks they were taking? Did any of them think that their ‘development’ would be the cause of deaths of innocent people?

Did they even consider or calculate the high cost of misery and mental anguish caused to the thousands who have had to be evacuated because of their irresponsible development?

I agree with the Selangor government and its policy to freeze development of Class 3 and 4 hillslopes.

It also looks like our sleepy PM has finally woken up and that his deputy is speaking with greater political will.

However, having worked in the public service – which has deteriorated over the years in terms of values and virtues – I tend to agree with George. After a few months, all this will be forgotten and physical development will start again.

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My warning to the federal government is that the rakyat had said on March 8 that ‘enough is not enough’. More action is needed. Talk without action is just noise; and wrong action without even talk is corruption.

There has to be serious political will of the kind demonstrated by the Selangor government. If the matter is badly handled by the federal government, it could lead to a change of government in the next general election.

Developers may be laughing all the way to the bank, but housebuyers have been left crying for making a so-called good investment in a house, which they can no longer call a home.

It is said that the world has come to a ‘greed is good’ thesis. This worldview has resulted in not just a financial crisis, but also another hillslope tragedy. May God give all of us more grace to accept the foibles of man!