Led by former Malaysian Bar president Ambiga Sreenevasan, the residents served a letter on Shahidan on Sept 21 stating that they would take DBKL and Shahidan to court in five days if the information on its flood mitigation plan was not forthcoming.

On Sept 22, DBKL said it had published its flash floods action plan for the year on May 9 and that it was working with several agencies to mitigate floods based on this plan.

“We will proceed to sue DBKL for not providing the requested information on flood mitigation,” said lawyer Lim Wei Jiet on Twitter.

“In our view, the flash floods action plan does not contain adequately detailed information on its flood mitigation strategy for Kuala Lumpur, which would allow meaningful engagement, scrutiny and accountability by the public.

“Simply put, it is an outdated plan which is inadequate to deal with the expected floods in November and December.”

He added that DBKL’s plan was drafted before the Auditor-General’s Report 2021 was published last month and hence does not take into account the weaknesses identified in the report.

The residents previously said that in the report, the A-G had highlighted several failures on the part of DBKL to carry out flood mitigation projects proposed in its own floods master plan.

The A-G concluded that only eight of the 104 flood mitigation measures proposed by DBKL had been implemented or were in the process of implementation, they said.

DBKL’s response to the A-G was that another 22 flood mitigation measures would be implemented this year.

When contacted, Ambiga said the residents hoped to file the suit “very soon” as it was an urgent matter for Kuala Lumpur residents.

“We will cast a wide net on the information needed as we believe they (DBKL) have disclosed the absolute minimum amount of information,” she told FMT.