{"id":92295,"date":"2020-09-15T15:37:20","date_gmt":"2020-09-15T07:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=92295"},"modified":"2020-09-15T15:46:31","modified_gmt":"2020-09-15T07:46:31","slug":"penang-ngo-questions-state-governments-seriousness-in-tackling-hill-clearing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=92295","title":{"rendered":"Penang NGO questions state government&#8217;s seriousness in tackling hill clearing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>GEORGE TOWN, Sept 15 (NNN-BERNAMA) &#8212; Citizen\u2019s Awareness Chant Group (CHANT) today questioned\u00a0the Penang government\u2019s\u00a0seriousness in combating illegal hill clearing in the state after another case was exposed in Bukit Relau.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Chant&#8217;s advisor Yan Lee claimed that there were&nbsp;at least four land clearing activities&nbsp;in Penang that caused mud floods,&nbsp;hill slope erosion and damage to&nbsp;nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;All these projects involve similar action, that is, clear the hill first and&nbsp;then have&nbsp;a \u2018catch me if you can\u2019&nbsp;attitude against the authority. They clearly do not have any respect for&nbsp;the state government,&#8221; he told reporters here today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yan questioned why the state government still allowed&nbsp;this to happen, why the state government did not work harder towards combating activities that could threaten the lives of the people&nbsp;in Penang?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said illegal land clearing activities in Penang had occurred at Botak Hill 1, Botak Hill 2 and Teluk Bahang, among the areas,\u00a0while the one in Ayer Itam was given Planning Permission back in 2016 but the project had\u00a0exceeded the deadline\u00a0for over two years now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yan also called on the state government to reveal whether all the projects were\u00a0related in terms of land ownership, contractors and any connections, claiming that\u00a0some contractors were\u00a0hiding behind different company\u00a0names to obscure the trail from the authorities and allowed to repeat the same operation on subsequent projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was reported yesterday that Penang Island City Council (MBPP) was\u00a0considering legal action against a land owner who had ignored\u00a0three stop-work orders since March and illegally cleared land for durian farming near Bukit Relau.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8212; NNN-BERNAMA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GEORGE TOWN, Sept 15 (NNN-BERNAMA) &#8212; Citizen\u2019s Awareness Chant Group (CHANT) today questioned\u00a0the Penang government\u2019s\u00a0seriousness in combating illegal hill clearing in the state after another case was exposed in Bukit Relau. Chant&#8217;s advisor Yan Lee claimed that there were&nbsp;at least four land clearing activities&nbsp;in Penang that caused mud floods,&nbsp;hill slope erosion and damage to&nbsp;nature. &#8220;All [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":92296,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[288,300,318],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92295"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=92295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92295\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/92296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}