Muhyiddin: Gazetted park and sultanate park are not the same

Home Minister Muhyiddin Yassin pointed out today that there is a difference between Pulau Kukup remaining as a gazetted national park and it being reclassified as sultanate land.

Muhyiddin said the Johor State Park Enactment was created when he was the state menteri besar between 1986 and 1995, during which all state parks were gazetted in order to preserve them.

“There was a decision from higher-ups that said we will make it as a national park, but the difference between what I did then and what is happening now is that land has been transferred as a sultanate land, so there is a slight difference in that status.

“It could have remained as a national park without being degazetted. It served that purpose already," he said at a press conference at the Bersatu headquarters in Petaling Jaya.

“But to transfer it as a sultanate land, then the status has slightly changed. 

"As much as they say they are going to do everything to maintain it as a national park, but the ownership has changed,” he added.

Muhyiddin said that he would rather appeal to the Johor sultan to maintain Pulau Kukup’s gazetted status as a national park, especially since he, as a Johorean, was not an "outsider."

[More to follow] - Mkini