All people want is sites reserved for public purposes?
Posted on July 6, 2012, Friday
KOTA KINABALU: Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) president Datuk Yong Teck Lee said all that the people want is a guarantee that the High Court, library and adjoining sites in the city will be permanently reserved for public purposes.
He contended that what is so difficult for Deputy Chief Minister cum Api Api assemblyman Datuk Dr Yee Moh Chai to promise that the lands ?High Court, library, DBKK building and car park, the Women and Children Clinic and the Chong Thien Vun Park ?will be protected for public purposes.
Yong was responding to the statement by Dr Yee on Thursday that City Hall had not received any proposal for commercial development at the site of the existing courthouse here.
Dr Yee, who is also Minister of Resource Development and Information Technology, had said the earlier claim by Yong that the courthouse was being relocated because a shopping complex had been planned for the area was misleading the public.
He further said that the land is under the jurisdiction of the federal government and that the state government offers a new site at Bukit Punai to the federal government to build a new court house “since the present High Court building is undergoing renovations”.
In a statement yesterday, Yong contended that Dr Yee’s flimsy explanation showed that the latter is either sleeping on his job or has a hidden agenda.
“Everybody knows that by the time the developer submits the development plan to DBKK for approval, it would be already too late to save the land for public purpose because, by then, the company would have acquired legally binding rights over the land.”
Yong said Dr Yee should ask himself whether the KL developer of the 59.21-acre State Railway reserve land at Kapayan submitted any development plan to City Hall first or was the company granted land rights before the plan was submitted to the City Hall.
He contended that it was also ridiculous for Dr Yee to say that a new courthouse would be built at Bukit Punai since the present High Court building was undergoing renovation.
oes Dr Yee mean that after the renovations of the existing High Court building, then the High Court will be re-located again from Bukit Punai?
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