Sahabat Alam Malaysia president Meenakshi Raman said the state government should not blame legalities when many other towns and cities had been able to implement their local plans much earlier.
“Why is Penang an exception? The legalities explanation is an attempt to confuse the people,” Meenakshi told FMT.
“The lack of a local plan gives the state flexibility to do what it wishes, subject only to the broad parameters of the first Penang structure plan (RSN) which is not detailed enough.”
She said that without a local plan, the state government and local councils had a free hand in allowing unfettered development.
A local plan dictates what can or cannot be built in any area, with strict zoning to allow relevant development in any one place.
The Penang government recently said legal and public consultation processes, among others, had stalled the local plan from being implemented.
“After 40-odd years since the first RSN was introduced in the 1980s, we have never once had a gazetted local plan. After every structure plan, a local plan is normally introduced,” Meenakshi said.
She said the RSN was not detailed enough as it was a macro-level town planning blueprint for the state, laying out spatial plans and outlining development plans without going into much detail.
In the absence of a local plan, she said, the Penang Island City Council relied on the 1996 policy plan, a document she claimed was conceived without any public consultation.
This was likely illegal under the Town and Country Planning Act 1976 (TCPA), as the 1996 plan was bereft of public feedback as required under the law, she said.
Questions about the local plan were raised yet again following reports that a mega-development project had been planned on land having century-old heritage homes off Burmah Road. Heritage activists have called for the area to be preserved.
State town and country planning committee chairman Jagdeep Singh Deo had said recently that the local plans for the island and Seberang Perai had been delayed because of “legal processes” which were unavoidable.
He said the law also required the state government to consider public feedback, which further delayed the release of the local plans.
FMT has contacted Jagdeep for further comment.