Penang BN: Police not the competent authority to probe landslide

Penang BN chairperson Teng Chang Yeow said the police force may not be the competent authority to probe the landslide tragedy which struck Tanjung Bungah last Saturday.

Teng said the police can only investigate the causes of death and casualties as a result of the landslide but not the cause of the disaster itself.

"Technical departments such as (the) Department of Occupational Safety and Health, and the Penang Island City Council's (MBPP) engineering department are likely more competent to assess a preliminary condition of the tragedy site," Teng said in a statement.

"There is no reason to lodge a police report on possible negligence since the state government is going to form a state level commission of inquiry into the landslide," he added.

"Why did MBPP fail to set up a technical committee to assess the landslide?" asked Teng, who was a one-term state executive councillor under the Gerakan administration, prior to 2008.

"The act of the state government and MBPP is nothing more than just passing the buck and shirking responsibility and accountancy," he stressed.

Teng was responding to state executive councillor Chow Kon Yeow's remark yesterday that a police report has been lodged over the "work site accident" which killed 11 on Oct 21.

Chow urged the police to probe possible "professional negligence" so that those responsible can be penalised by the law.

As the tragedy is a serious one which caused the death of one Malaysian and 10 foreign workers, Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng has formed a State Commission of Inquiry to probe the incident in detail.

Civil society groups and NGOs have been calling for a moratorium on hillside development, although the state government and the Institute of Engineers Malaysia have insisted that the project, involving 980 units of affordable housing, was being developed on flat land.

Teng said the state government and MBPP, which is under the former’s jurisdiction must be "more transparent than transparent, more accountable than accountable and more competent than competent", in managing the landslide.

He noted that the MBPP has instructed its chief architect to lodge a police report on the possibility of any negligence in managing and conducting on the construction site.

"What is shocking is that the observation was done solely by the chief architect on the site (after the tragedy) and was used as a basis to lodge a police report," Teng said.

"The very least the MBPP should have done is to get a technical committee comprising their own departments and other professional bodies to conduct a preliminary check on the site before making any conclusion," he added.

- Mkini