Sad day for Residents of Tanjong Bungah and Batu Ferringhi

It would seem that there is no justice in Penang as far as development goes.
We have Ivory building their high density housing towers in Batu Ferringhi we have Asia Pacific land building their illegal office block on mount pleasure and not one person is prepared to lift finger to stop it.
We really did paint paradise and put up a parking lot!

GEORGE TOWN: The Tanjung Bungah Residents’ Association (TBRA) who failed in its bid in the High Court for the status of Tanjung Bungah’s locality in the Penang Structure Plan 2020 to be amended.
Justice Yaacob Md Sam allowed an application by defendants - the state government, the Town and Country Planning Department director and the state Planning Committee to strike out the suit brought by TBRA.
The application was allowed with TBRA ordered to pay costs of RM5,000.
TBRA’s chairman George Patrick Alexander Aeria and co-chairman Tan Jin Aik, who brought the action on behalf of the association, were the plaintiffs in the suit.
In his ruling, Yaacob held that the TBRA did not commence the right mode of action against the defendants.
He said TBRA should have sued the defendants by way of a judicial review and not by way of an originating summons.
Yaacob also said the TBRA had also brought the action way past 40 days of the grace period allowed after the plan was approved and gazetted.
He said there was inordinate delay on the part of the plaintiffs in bringing the action.
TBRA had only filed the suit against the defendants on June 25, last year, which was about three years after the plan was approved and gazetted.
TBRA, represented by Lalitha Menon and Agatha Foo, brought the action against the defendants to determine the status of the locality under the structure plan.
Among others, they sought a declaration that a diagram which indicated that Tanjung Bungah was in the Primary Development Corridor (PDC), and not in the Secondary Development Corridor (SDC), as not valid.
The plaintiffs also want a declaration that a diagram in the structure plan which was gazetted on June 28, 2007 had obvious mistakes and was erroneous in law as it contradicted the statements in the structure plan.
They want another declaration that the SDC should start from Tanjung Bungah to Teluk Bahang and not from Mar Vista to Teluk Bahang as shaded in a diagram of the gazetted plan.
In his affidavit, Aeria said when the draft plan was drawn up, Tanjung Bungah was under the SDC but when the plan was approved and gazetted, a diagram showed that the locality was shaded as being under the PDC.
He said the density of the PDC was between 30 to 120 housing units per acre while the density for the SDC 15 units per acre.
He said by having the locality under the PDC , it would create a bad impact in the lives of the Tanjung Bungah residents as numerous problems would arise out of the massive development there.
TRBA’s lawyers had contended that the association was not able to file the action via a judicial review within the 40-day period as it did not know of the changes of the structure plan which was approved and gazetted.
In their statement of defence, the defendants said the action by the plaintiffs was an abuse of court process and they had no right to initiate the action without first exhausting domestic remedies available under the Town and Country Planning Act 1976.