PKR: Pengerang project guise for massive land grab
UPDATED 3.25PM
PKR veep Chua Jui Meng alleges the project will gobble up massive acres to enrich Ghani Othman's cronies.
The petrochemical project in Pengerang, Johor is a guise for a massive land-grab by Johor menteri besar Ghani Othman to enrich his cronies, alleged PKR vice president Chua Jui Meng.
Chua claimed that when the Petronas Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development (Rapid) was originally proposed to Selangor last year, the land request was for 2,889 acres, while Petronas later requested for 6,400 acres of land in Johor.
However, the compulsory land acquisition that is now taking place in phases to make way for the project in Pengerang would eventually gobble up 22,500 acres of land, said Chua, who is also Johor PKR chief.
“This shows that Ghani Othman’s intention is to get large tracts of land on the cheap. Cheap! (This is) in order to start a land bank again.
“The way it will be done is to buy low and sell it cheaply to cronies. The cronies would change the land type from agriculture to development, and jack up the price by 1,000 percent or more,” he said at a press conference at PKR’s headquarters today.
When asked to substantiate his claims, Chua said this was “based on antecedents, what had been happening all these time.
“We are talking about the Iskandar region. Huge land banks were bought, and it ended up in whose hands? UEM and all these developers,” he said, before adding Tanjung Pelepas Port and independent power projects to the list.
He also claimed that the land valuations on which the compensation packages are based on were made two years before the intention to acquire the land was gazetted, further driving down the price of already-cheap agricultural land.
The first phase of the acquisition, he said, would affect 292 landowners, their families, plus another 500 families occupying the land.
“Rapid would wipe out 17 villages whose residents are mostly ethnic Malays. The 180-year-old Pengerang town is a Malaysian Chinese town and would suffer the same fate. The triple jeopardies dealt to Pengerangites will be loss of livelihood, lands and highly-polluted environment,” he said.
In addition, Chua said the tenants of the affected lands were not told whether they would be compensated.
“When the residents ask where they would stay, the answer from the Land Office officers is, ‘go stay in a hotel or rent a house,” he claimed.
Meanwhile when asked about Chua's allegations later today, Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin dismissed it as an opposition "strategy" to win support for the next general election.
"This project is for national interest and not state interest, unlike Selangor government's land grab of Yayasan Basmi Kemiskinan's (YBK) land," he said.
Additional reporting by Zulaikha Zulkifli.
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