D-Day for former Batu Estate workers

Their homes will be demolished by DBKL even though a High Court judgment in 2003 decided otherwise.

KUALA LUMPUR: Batu Estate’s ex-workers are facing their D-Day tomorrow as Kuala Lumpur City Hall’s (DBKL) safety and enforcement department decided in favour of  Mayland Developers Sdn Bhd to demolish their homes located next to Putramas Condominium.

Notice of the demolition has already been issued to the 38 former workers.

Yesterday, the ex-estate workers submitted a memorandum to DBKL and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) to stop the demolition.
Representative V Thilagenthiran questioned DBKL’s involvement in the dispute between Mayland and the workers, some having lived there for the past 70 years.

“Why is DBKL interfering in the matters of two parties over a private land?” he asked.
“The demolition would violate a High Court judgment that we are the rightful residents in October 2003.”
DBKL’s assistant administrative officer, Sa’adiah Hashim, however, maintained that the homes of the ex-Batu workers were squatters.

“Our job is to demolish the squatters,” she said when met at the department.

Thilagentiran later had a meeting with DBKL’s operations enforcement officer, Osman Ismail, which was constantly interrupted by Sa’adiah.

“She claimed that we received between RM10,000 and RM30,000 as compensation to leave but we did not,” Thilagenthiran said.

Since 2003, Mayland was supposed to take up further court proceedings if it wanted to evict the ex-Batu estate workers “with full hearing and not summarily disposed of”, but the developer had  resorted to intimidating the workers, using gangsters since mid last year, alleged Thilagenthiran.

Previously, local MIC representatives lobbied  the ex-workers to accept the RM30,000 and flats meant for squatters.

Failure to do so prompted Federal Territories and Urban Well-Being Deputy Minister M Saravanan to rope in DBKL which issued a demolition notice in October 2010.

But the demolition did not take place after a verbal assurance from the Minister Raja Nong Chik Zainal Abidin’s private secretary, Shazril Fazira Faridam.