BALIK PULAU – After going to court on several occasions since 2006 to fight against development projects looking to bulldoze villages, former senator and lawyer, Yusmadi Yusoff, was served an eviction notice last week. His family has been forced to move out of their home at Kampung Jalan Bharu.
Three weeks was all he and his neighbour were given. They will have to pack up and move during a pandemic because he was accused of illegally living on the plot of land.
Yusmadi told The Vibes that agreements between the landowner were conducted traditionally, where they paid a sum for the land to the landowner to build their homes and care for the land. However, after ownership is passed down from generation to generation, the initial agreement becomes void. If the landowner wishes to sell to a developer, everyone has to move out.
Unfortunately, this is not a rare event. Many have been evicted from homes they grew up in and the land they used to work on for housing developments. Two to three-storey homes have sprung up like a sore thumb amid kampung homes, separated by drainage and tarred road.
In March, 13 families at the same location were evicted after the land was sold to a pharmaceutical company.
Just behind the same village, 100 units of low-cost housing surrounded by paddy fields were built, along with rows of double-storey terrace houses.
While housing developments are crucial to accommodate population increases, most of those standing today are left unoccupied, with overgrown foliage spilling from its fences. An initial calculation shows that more than 70% of the recently built units are unoccupied.
These units priced from RM550,000 to RM1 million do not appeal to Balik Pulau folks, but investors and the rich may purchase them to make Penang’s countryside their second or third home.
“These homes are not built for the people of Balik Pulau to buy because who can afford it here. The architecture of these homes is suited for locations like Batu Feringghi, where properties sell in the millions.
“Plus, the people who buy these homes are not originally from Balik Pulau.
“I am not against development, but the ones that are done here should make the people of Balik Pulau happy, not angry. This a flawed idea of development,” Yusmadi told The Vibes.
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The PKR member said there is too much importance placed on urban, developed areas, though the countryside is as important. He proposes rubanisation, a concept of rural settlement coined by Tay Kheng Soon, a highly esteemed veteran architect from Singapore, where people live in small, networked settlements, within the folds of nature and farms, and addresses the crises that become evident as urbanisation reaches its apogee.
“Right now, there is development, but the lives of the people living in Balik Pulau remain unchanged, the income is the same, their status is the same.
“In fact, the people are cornered to the periphery. For example, for Kampung Jalan Bharu, half of the kampung is gone, and the paddy fields are getting smaller.
“I believe that when it comes to development, care must be taken before introducing it, or it will become a new problem,” he said.
Born and raised at the “back of the island”, Yusmadi is convinced that literacy and access to justice are the types of development the people of Balik Pulau need, not just concrete structures.
“Planning law, property rights and sustainability... this is the new human rights here.
“We need a humane development, one that relates to being humane and taking into account the cultural factors of an area, not a token economy system,” he said.
In a research paper entitled 'Bottom-up Approach: Urbanization in the Perception of the Local Communities of Balik Pulau, Penang Island, Malaysia', authored by Khalid Sabbar Mohammed, Narimah Samat and Yasin Abdalia in 2014, highlighted how the continuous urban landscape is spreading into Balik Pulau’s agricultural areas, changing the rural, social and cultural mosaics. It is also rapidly changing where the new structure of residential areas are.
They call for residents’ perception to be taken to account so that sound and sustainable development can be achieved, instead of imposing urban development standards to rural and pre-urban areas.
After all, if Balik Pulau is set to emulate all that the eastern coast has become, what charm is left to the once serene and green countryside? – The Vibes, September 17, 2021
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