PUBLIC STATEMENT The Say No to Kidex (SNTK) group would like to thank Selangor Menteri Besar Mohamad Azmin Ali for meeting us officially on Nov 19 to hear our take on Kidex. We would like to put on record that during this meeting, we had presented a memorandum on behalf of SNTK and numerous residents organizations, representing upwards of 60,000 people, expressing our strong oppostion to the Kidex Skyway. We justified our collective stand against the Kidex Skyway on numerous technical and political reasons, some of which were as follows: • The need for or justification of the Kidex Skyway has not been demonstrated, especially when the traffic assessments confirms the expressway would fail to alleviate traffic on the LDP. • The Kidex Skyway would be 5 to 10 metres away from schools, homes and hospitals. This is against the Malaysian Highway Authority (LLM) standards of 13 metres minimum distance. • The Kidex Skyway goes against the Pakatan Rakyat Buku Jingga manifesto which states the PR political coalition is against cronyism and tolled-highways. • The Kidex Skyway risks ruining the aesthetics of a mature neighbourhood, adversely affecting residential and commercial premises, limiting access and visibility of businesses, and displacing elderly and other residents. We also indicated to the MB that the three conditions he had publicly announced on Nov 1 to enable Kidex to go ahead were a step in the right direction but were, by themselves, inadequate. In particular, we pointed out that the condition that the traffic impact study must demonstrate substantial benefit for commuters did not take into account impacts to the residents who lived along the highway’s alignment. Having heard our concerns, the MB offered to fine tune the conditions with our input. Seeing as it would be better for us to provide such input than to leave the conditions worded poorly as is, we agreed to work with the MB while reiterating that this does not mean SNTK endorses the conditions or the expressway itself. After meeting us, Azmin Ali met with LLM on Nov 20 and issued a statement with revised conditions based on our initial feedback. Instead of merely indicating that the traffic study should show substantial benefit to commuters, the condition now required the traffic impact assessment to show that it would benefit users and residents of Petaling Jaya. More importantly, Azmin Ali said that the fulfilment of the conditions would only cause the Selangor government to agree “review the submissions and consider the application for the proposed highway.” This list of conditions was further fine tuned and incorporated a considerable part of what SNTK suggested when it was delivered via the MB’s Selangor Budget Speech on Nov 24. This final list of conditions state that: • traffic impact, environmental impact and social impact assessment studies independently done that must show a clear / substantial benefit to both road users and residents living along the highway corridor; • the studies must show these benefits throughout the life of the concession; and • the rate of return of investment must be shown. SNTK would like to thank the MB for listening to us and giving us the opportunity to help fine tune the conditions, which was more than what former Selangor MB Tan Sri Abdul Khalid Ibrahim ever did. We are also grateful the MB has required full and independent studies, which the Federal Government has so far failed to do. SNTK would also like to reiterate that our stand remains a firm “No to Kidex”, as these conditions and the design of the expressway itself do not adequately take into account the numerous technical reasons on why the Kidex Skyway is just a badly designed and misguided highway project. These reasons are all clearly stated in our report, which was handed over to both the Works Ministry and the Selangor government and can be viewed publicly here (https://facebook/groups/saynotokidex/1557608187790806/).
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 09:02:05 +0000