I refer to the Malaysiakini report Landslide tragedy: Remains of Sri Lankan maid found .

At the time of writing, I am advised that it is certain while the possibility of stress and further slope failure cannot to be discounted, this may have an even greater impact on the other properties in the locality.

Thousands were evacuated and as expected, the government issued a statement that it was freezing all building permits for hill slope development.

But the truth is only a fool absolute would be happy with this statement and take it at face value.

I say this for the simple reason because I had heard it 15 years ago just days after the mother of all landslide tragedies.

It was, to be exact, after the infamous heart-wrenching Highland Towers carnage in December 1993 when the then deputy premier, Anwar Ibrahim issued a very strong statement stating that there will be a total freeze on all hill slope development!

Since then, there have been more than 12 major landslides and billions in financial losses but till today, no one has been made accountable for all these tragedies, let alone any criminal negligence chargers or developers or policymakers or head of government agencies being jailed let alone, suspended.

To put it sarcastically, it is ‘business as usual’ where laws are overlooked and manipulated, corners cut, common sense and due diligence discarded and public interest sacrificed at the altars of obese and corrupt handouts and profits.

One would have thought that the unnecessary loss of 48 lives in the Highland Towers tragedy in 1993 would have jolted the nation and its government agencies to entrench checks and balances in enforcing a total freeze on such constructions but it was not to be.

Hill slope development runs wild in all major cities and states in Malaysia. At Bukit Antarabangsa, we saw a rerun of the same episode with a wide range of people from all walks of lives made victims.

Those who thought they saw the last of such horrors were reminded that nothing has changed. I was among the many who walked and assisted during the tragedy of December 1993 and witnessed first hand the horror, the tears, the broken spirits and the anxiety!

To witness a dear friend and one I whom hold in high respect, former deputy premier, Musa Hitam a broken man and standing in total helplessness at the site of the collapsed Highland Towers as it drizzled slightly was tragic for he had just acknowledged the death of his son Rashid Carlos and his wife Rozita.

I understand today at Bukit Antarabangsa like 15 years ago, there are many people screaming for some form of action from a parliamentary white paper, to a royal commission, to a prime ministerial statement. Or the initiating the immediate suspension of those in leadership at the Ampang Jaya Municipal Council.

But I am only too confident that based on the track record of the past, the apathy, the entrenched incompetence, the unfettered corruption, the ‘close both eyes policy’ and the ‘smart partnerships’ of developers and policy-makers will see to it that this loss of lives and property damage at Bukit Antarabangsa will be soon forgotten.

Similar multi-million ringgit projects that contravene and make nonsense of present environmental and building legislation and guidelines in the country will continue unhindered with the prospect of a similar loss of lives in the future.

It can stop and if there are still a few good and honest men in our corridors of power, in government agencies, in the building industry and among the monitoring bodies.

Who will say ‘enough is enough’ and deal a severe blow to any nature or form of illegality or irregularity in the construction and building sector and industry?