I refer to the Chief Minister’s statement in response to my letter “Penang’s Bayan Lepas LRT – Glorious Legacy or White Elephant Project”, in which he accuses Penang Forum of making baseless allegations towards the Penang state government.
In fact, the Chief Minister has not addressed the issues raised in my letter about ridership, population catchment, the LRT depot, and most importantly, financial and cash flow issues. Instead, he only explained that the first EIA issued in 2017 was displayed that year.
Why is the CM referring to a display of a two-year-old EIA when we are talking about the second EIA dated August 27, 2019? Why was this “Revised EIA” only uploaded on September 13, 2019 on the DOE website but not uploaded on the government website?
The second “Revised EIA” shows significant revisions to the first one. For example, the airport station has been moved to a different location, and the distance from the LRT station to the check-in counter has been changed from 265m to 140m, although the actual walking distance could still be more than 200m if it involves circumventing the new parking structure.
The new LRT alignment would obviously affect houses, schools, mosques, and temples in different ways; why are they not shown? I am sure that the impacted stakeholders would like to see the Revised EIA and to be consulted in the upcoming Social Impact Assessment.
They should take heed that the Social Impact Assessment for the Penang South Reclamation was approved (May 2019) without alerting the relevant fishermen leaders and concerned civil society leaders, much less consulting them.
The Penang State Government should provide detailed information of how the ambitious PTMP is supposed to roll out physically and financially over the next 10, 20, 30 years. As Penang Forum has been repeatedly saying, the first step to convincing the public that the current version of the PTMP is the best solution to our traffic problems is to open the PTMP up to professional review.
The Chief Minister has so far not presented any credible arguments as to why the Bayan Lepas LRT should not be regarded as a “white elephant project”. Would he like to invite Penang Forum to a public debate over this topic?
Khoo Salma Nasution is a member of Penang Forum
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.