Over the last few weeks, the Petaling Jaya Municipal Council (MPPJ) has been holding numerous briefings seeking public feedback on its PJ1 draft local plan  a proposal for development and redevelopment in the Bukit Gasing and Damansara Utama constituencies.

Top MPPJ officials and state assemblypersons are trying their best to convince PJ residents that they have nothing to worry about and that their land is 200 percent safe.

But the residents may not have realised how close their fears are to the truth of eventually losing their land through compulsory acquisition for development.

The general fear that the state will acquire land compulsorily, if necessary, was confirmed by the MPPJ town planning director Sharifah Marhaini Syed Ali in the latest briefing for residents of Sections 1, 1A, 2, 3 and 4 yesterday.

She said once the draft local plan is adopted and PJ is gazetted as a development action area under Section 38(1) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1976, the MPPJ is empowered by Section 38(2) to acquire, by purchase or by compulsory acquisition land to develop.

Important to note is the effect of a declaration under Section 39 which provides that every declaration under Section 38 is with the intention of acquiring land under the Land Acquisition Act 1960.

So, appeals by MPPJ officials like Sharifah and politicians like Bukit Gasing state assemblyperson Dr Lim Thuang Seng to PJ residents to record any objection to the draft local plan could well be a trap.

All the MPPJ needs to do is get the state government to gazette the entire PJ as a development action area on grounds that a more systematic development is better than an ad-hoc one.

And they only have to show that residents themselves had asked for changes to various parts of PJ, albeit their feedback are actually objections to the draft local plan.

Parallel development

Meanwhile, a parallel development is slowly unfolding in another corner of the Selangor administration  the Petaling District land office.

Residents have alleged that the development reeks of an insidious plot by the relevant authorities to trap leaseholders within the areas earmarked for development and redevelopment in the draft local plan into surrendering their land.

What is touted as two separate matters is actually a dual-pronged attack on residents to relieve them of their leaseholds to facilitate the smooth implementation of the planned development and redevelopment projects contained in the draft local plan, they claimed.

On one hand, the MPPJ has succeeded in confusing the residents by announcing the PJ1 local draft plan while on the other, the Land Offices letters have caused residents sleepless nights over the status of their land.

So when questions over the status of leaseholds were raised during yesterdays briefing, Sharifah and Lim confidently assured the affected residents that it was a Land Office matter and it had nothing to do with the draft plan.

For instance, a number of residents have been receiving unsolicited letters from the Land Office since 1999, asking them to surrender their lease at a time when many have at least 30 to 60 years more before expiry.

They have to pay a hefty premium ranging from RM100,000 to RM150,000 within three months of the notice if they want to retain the lease, and some have unfortunately settled the premium at a discounted rate believing that their lands are safe.

But for those residents, mostly senior citizens, who can neither afford the premium nor get a bank loan, the lease is as good as gone, and theyll have to move elsewhere.

One example  the Land Office issued a letter in Oct 1999 informing the resident that the Selangor state executive council had on May 12 approved the alienation of land for the purposes of extending the lease, subject to settling the premium.

The letter was worded in such a way as to give the impression that the Land Office was merely responding to an application from a leaseholder for an extension, which is usually automatic.

In another letter dated March 23 this year, the residents were given three months to settle a hefty RM145,000 premium, failing which the renewal application will be revoked or the lease approval will lapse.

Unanswered questions

But two nagging questions remain unanswered.

The first. Section 228 gives leaseholders any time before the expiry of the lease to apply for a renewal. Why the hurry?

Second, the offer of a discounted rate for the forced renewal is odd because the calculation is fixed under Section 81 of the National Land Code. How come the high premium?

As an upset resident said: Since you want my land back, it means that something is up your sleeve.

What if the affected residents refuse to surrender their lease? Unfortunately, once the draft local plan is gazetted, the MPPJ can go ahead and acquire any land compulsorily under the Land Acquisition Act 1960.

Then comes the other aspect of reverse acquisition of land. This is where the Land Office is afforded an opportunity to forfeit a lease on grounds that the leaseholders had breached the lease conditions when they objected to the draft local plan and had instead asked for some improvements to services or facilities.

But isnt this exactly what the MPPJ is asking residents to do? To participate in the public objection stage for feedback on the draft local plan?

About 100,000 people out of the almost half a million population in PJ are expected to be affected by the PJ1 draft local plan which spans 13 years from 1997 to 2010.

The public objection stage ends on May 18.

Malaysiakini s request to interview MPPJ president Emran Kadir was turned down due to his busy schedule while efforts to elicit comments from other council officials proved to be futile as well.

This is the first in a series of articles on the PJ1 draft local plan. The second part will appear tomorrow.