The Land Transport Commission (Spad) has clarified that its stand on land acquisition of heritage buildings along Jalan Sultan, Kuala Lumpur was not contradicted by MCA president Dr Chua Soi Lek.

NONE Spad chief executive officer Mohd Nur Kamal ( right ), in a letter to MCA-owned English daily The Star , made the clarification following "inaccurate interpretations" of a MCA-Spad-property owners dialogue on Aug 23.

He said that this was corroborated by transcripts of Chua's press conference after the Aug 23 meeting where the latter had said:

"Government will proceed with the acquisition but with the condition that it would strengthen the buildings affected by the construction of the MRT tunnel, for the safety of the buildings' occupants...

"But after the tunnel is completed in about six months, they will be allowed to move back to conduct business as usual," Chua was quoted as saying in Mohd Nur's letter.

No guarantees

He said that following this, Spad chairperson Syed Hamid Albar had reiterated that it was agreed in principle during the meeting that the land acquisition was required, but the property owners are allowed to return to their original properties.

However, he stressed out that the government cannot guarantee that the property owners will get their properties back.

"(Syed Hamid) added that all parties understood that there were many details that needed to be ironed out in order for this to be achieved, such as compensation, timeline and the rights of the current tenants occupying the properties.

spad meeting mca and jalan sultan shop owners 230811 chua soi lek "While the process of ironing out the finer details is being done, the government is in no position to make guarantees on the return of these properties," said Mohd Nur.

Among other factors, the buildings must be certified fit for occupancy before the original owners are allowed to "take back" the buildings.

Chua ( left ) had come under fire from his opponents for claiming victory over Spad's land acquisition plans along Jalan Sultan, only to be embarrassingly refuted by Syed Hamid just a day later.

Some buildings to be demolished

As for the debate on whether the property owners can keep their buildings while the government owns the underground portion, Mohd Nur said that the National Land Code 1965 made this impossible, unless the owner allows an underground cubic layer of underground land, known as the stratum, be owned separately.

"There are two principal ways in which the process of separating the ownership of surface and underground lands can be carried out. One is to have all affected individual land owners apply for stratum titles to be issued to the Government.

"The other is for the government to acquire the land and then subsequently re-alienate the properties on the surface back to their original owners while keeping ownership of the stratum," he explained.

Since the second option would be time consuming and allowed owners to delay their decision, the second option was chosen.

However, buildings sitting above underground rail stations will have to be demolished as the station's footprint needs to be excavated from the surface.