Director-general of DID (Drainage and Irrigation Department) Keizrul said we should blame the rapid growth and poor town planning as the cause of the recent flood situation in Kuala Lumpur.So, it's blame town-planning department of City Hall?
But DID was one of the authority in which their approval must be sought before any projects or housing development would be approved. At such, didn't DID play an important role to see that all drainage system planned had been effective and efficient before they put their signatures as one of the town planning approval body?
The fact remains is that, throughout Malaysia, town planning system in the city and towns are ad hoc and lacks a long-term foresight-based systematic integrated plan based on future needs and requirements with a thorough analysis of the projections of growth and defragmentations arising from social evolutions and commercial gatherings. The planning authorities would just approved projects based on the submissions that had fulfilled the standards and procedures as stated in the guidebook (and contributions where necessary, written and codified, or by mutual understanding requirements). However, the authorities such as DID, JKR and City Hall do not have an integrated town planning system which will include the projections and analysis of the system adequacy and integrity over the next 20 years.
I was doing a research at PJS and Subang jaya and wasn't surprise to me that in an area near to Sunway-Leisure Complex, they had now built another 4-blocks of service apartments which was next to another 4-blocks of office complex called Bali Building (previously built by Sunway Bhd). There, the road side drains is 12inches and the culverts are 24inches diameter. So, you would understand the capacity of the drains and culverts that was to cater for 8-blocks of highrise buildings and not considering the fact that there are upstream residence and shops, and the need to evaluate the system channels that will be transporting the water from the upstream down to the monsoon-drain at Federal Highway. So, when it rains, the whole road will be flooded. Note that all these development were approved by the local city council in conjunction with the approval of the other 8-authorities such as DID, JKR, Bomba, Kementerian, etc.
Do we have a solution to the problem? Will the SMART Tunnel be smart enough to collect the liquid if the liquid would not be able to discharge themselves through the inadequate and under-capacity drainage system which is fully clogged and blocked?
