Despite losing their case against the national electricity corporation in the apex court, residents of Rawang New Village never gave up on their efforts to protect their homes against intruding high-tension cable towers.

Their insistence in finding justice - and keeping away the dangers emitted by high voltage electricity cables - has brought them new hope: they recently discovered that Tenaga Nasional Bhd (TNB) actually owns reserve land just beside their village.

So, there lies the justifiable route for the high-tension cable towers.

women leader forum scah 240408 chew mei fun Rawang state assemblyperson Gan Pei Nee ( left ) said this newly exposed route was not known to the public before. It certainly was not the same as the alternative route proposed by Rawang New Village residents years ago.

"An anonymous person tipped us off about the TNB land in March. After some exhaustive detective work, we found that the original route for the towers does not pass through Rawang New Village."

Gan told Malaysiakini that compared with passing through the new village, the length of the original route for the TNB power cables at around 1.2km was almost the same.

"The alternative route proposed by Rawang residents is 7km long, and TNB complained about extra high cost. It shouldn't complain now, since the length of the original route is almost the same as routing the cables through the village."

She said the TNB reserve land was located in an industrial area just beside Rawang New Village.

"When making our checks, we found the land titles stating ‘LLN reserve'. This shows that it is the original TNB reserve land for the high tension cable towers."

TNB directed to survey original route

She added that this discovery led to Selangor Menteri Besar Khalid Ibrahim directing TNB to survey the original route and make a presentation to the Selangor State Economic Council on Thursday.

Gan, together with representatives of the residents, officials from Rawang Land Office, TNB and the Selayang Municipal Council went to survey the reserve land yesterday.

rawang protest 170310 07 Village head Goh Ah Kow accused the previous BN government of concealing the original route from the public and selling off part of the land for industries.

Goh suspects that some parties might have a hidden interest in the reserve land and influenced the re-routing of the high tension cable towers through Rawang New Village instead.

The residents have been opposing moves to route the TNB high-tension cable towers through their village since 2005.

Worried about potential health hazards from the power cables, they have held a number of protests against the plan and finally took TNB to court.

The Federal Court last year ruled that TNB could resume the construction of its cable towers through the village, and ordered the power utility giant to pay the residents RM10.4 million in compensation.