Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) today revealed that it chose to remain silent regarding criticisms from the public regarding the KL Draft City Plan 2020 (KLDCP) because it did not want to appear defensive.

kl draft city plan dbkl media briefing 040608 zainab mohd ghazali DBKL Master Plan department director Zainab Mohd Ghazali told reporters at a media briefing that this is to allow the public to freely give their feedback on the controversial local plan.

"The people can voice out their views as we have given feedback forms out to people and we have the ‘e-opinion’ page in our website. The issue of DBKL not responding is not because we don’t want to.

"We are also recording the people’s views in the media but I don’t think we want to respond to it right now because we would not like to be seen as defensive," she said.

She explained that DBKL does not want to overlap the role played by the public opinion hearing committee (POHC) that has been tasked with collating the feedback.

"We don’t want the committee to be placed in a difficult position if those who came up with the plan have already commented prior to their hearing.

"We’re collecting all the views and putting them together based on subjects and issues. We will take all views whether positive or negative, as long as it can help us improve the plan.

"They must be justified views, check your facts and more so, give us the solutions so we can incorporate those ideas into the plan. Don’t just criticise the plans," she asserted.

First ever local plan

The KLDCP entitled 'Kuala Lumpur - A World Class City', is the capital's first ever local plan that sets out a 13-year guide for decision makers, city planners, designers and builders on the direction of growth for the city.

kl draft city plan dbkl media briefing 040608 presentation However, the civil society has accused the draft city plan of breaching clauses stated in the KL Structure Plan 1984 as well as a National Physical Plan.

Since its highly-anticipated launch on May 15, interest groups have launched criticisms ranging from transportation to safety and the environment.

The voluminous reports have also been accused of being people-unfriendly because of the ‘technical jargons’ as well as complicated graphs and charts in the bi-lingual publication.

Resulting from this, it was revealed yesterday that the 10 Pakatan Rakyat MPs in KL will be conducting a road show to explain the draft city plan to the grassroots beginning June 15.

Asked to comment on this, Zainab said DBKL did not have the resources to do the same hence they decided to conduct briefings for focus groups instead.

"We called the MPs to attend the briefing during the early stage but they were attending Parliamentary sessions so we are taking the opportunity during their break to come for a briefing with the community groups.

"We are arranging to meet them. It’s not like we are not doing it but we’ve got to do it in stages. We need to focus and we can’t call everybody and brief them all at one time.

"For those who are not invited through our letters, they can still walk in and join any of the sessions," she said adding that information on briefings have been released to the public.

Leading consultant for the draft city plan Norliza Hashim noted that she is personally happy with the amount of interests generated over the KLDCP.

"I think it is fantastic that all this has happened. I’ve been involved in so many studies, for the first time the awareness level is much higher than before.

"Some locals plans in the past has had no objections at all. Having no objections at all is not good," she said during the question and answer session after conducting the media briefing.

She also hoped that after the entire process, the local plan can be implemented to make KL more livable with more comfort and safety in the city.

"Currently the city is like a rat race everybody drives into in the morning and leaves in the evening. People don’t feel passionate or attached to the city.

"I don’t think we can live and breathe in this city. This is because we have been giving the wrong priorities to cars. This plan hopes to put priorities in place," she said.

Cannot please everyone

Norliza, who is also Malaysian Institute of Planners president, admitted that the plan cannot please everyone but groups that are often overlooked in big plans have been prioritised this time.

"Definitely we cannot please everyone but this plan nonetheless gives priority to lower income groups and minorities that have been left out of the big plans.

"We’ve lost many opportunities in other projects so we don’t want to miss out on this opportunity again," she said.

The public is given until August 31 to give their feedback on the KLDCP. After the deadline, the POHC will go through the feedback and prepare a report to be submitted to KL mayor Abdul Hakim Borhan.

The mayor will then consulte the DBKL advisory board and present any amendments necessary to the Federal Territories Ministry.

The ministry and its development advisory board will go through all the documents including the draft plan, the POHC report and amendments before making their final announcement.