The Opposition has criticised the Malacca state government for failing to prevent forest reserves from being logged, accusing the latter of abusing its powers.

DAP state assembly woman for Durian Daun Betty Chew today called on the state to review all usage of forest reserve land for public projects or logging from year 1995 to 2000.

As the government has been approving more forest reserve land than necessary for development projects, she said this move is "to ensure that there will be no abuse of power and that the government will do its best to preserve the environment".

Chew claimed that although the state government has stopped logging activities in forest reserves, logging is still allowed in forest reserves made available for public development projects.

She said that this policy does not make sense as it is open to abuse when these public projects take up less land than the reserves allocated to them.

"Approving land reserves beyond what is necessary and decreasing the areas of forest reserves for the purpose of making money and not for public projects is definitely an abuse of power," she added.

She said that chief minister Mohd Ali Rustam has issued her a written reply in the state assembly on Sept 7 stating that the area of forest reserves used for the purpose of state development from 1995 to 2000 was about 1,606 acres.

If things continue at this rate, Chew said, Malacca may suffer from an acute shortage of forest reserves by the year 2020.

She claimed that forest reserve land has decreased from 6,600 acres to less than 5,500 acres this year due to the conversion of 1,605.38 acres for so-called public projects and logging activities.

She said that although the people want Malacca to achieve the status of a developed state by 2010, they do not want all forest reserve land to be depleted by that time.

"Whatever that is left of the 1,606 acres of land which has been approved but not used for public projects for the last five years should be reverted to forest reserve land and should not be used for logging activities," she added.