SHAH ALAM – A group of long-time Petaling Jaya residents staged a peaceful protest in front of the Selangor state secretariat complex this morning against the construction of the Petaling Jaya Traffic Dispersal Elevated Highway (PJD Link).
Speaking on behalf of the group, Tracy Toh, said the 34.3km expressway, which cuts through established neighbourhoods, is ultimately destructive for local residents and unlikely to alleviate traffic woes.
“We are making this stand in front of the state secretariat building today because our online protest and opposition by MPs and resident groups against the PJD Link have been ignored.
“It shouldn’t fall on us to exhaust our resources to fight a developer. The state and federal governments should be acting in the interest of existing residents, business owners, and stakeholders, but they aren’t doing so,” said Toh.
Toh also lamented the lack of information on the PJD Link despite repeated requests by residents to elected representatives and state agencies.
As such, Toh added that they have filed a request under the state’s Freedom of Information Enactment (FOI) to gain more information on the expressway.
“The FOI request is being done because our elected representatives for Petaling Jaya, save for one, have failed to ask these questions at the state assembly or Parliament, or used their offices to obtain this information,'' she said.
Toh also said that residents and the public at large were not consulted on the expressway as there hasn’t been a single town hall on the matter.
“Some elected representatives are refusing to even take a stand on the PJD Link issue,” she said.
Also present at the protest was Damansara MCA chairman Tan Gim Tuan who called on the state government and the respective elected representatives to be transparent on the project.
He further explained that the residents have a right to scrutinise the project’s traffic impact assessment report as well as the environmental assessment report before it can even proceed with construction.
“There is also a statutory requirement for such projects to go through public consultation, so they must come clean,” he said.
‘Say No to Kidex’
PJD Link is a 34.3km expressway set to begin from the NKVE toll plaza in Damansara and end at the Bukit Jalil highway interchange.
Toh said that PJD Link is the new name of the Kinrara-Damansara Expressway (Kidex) that had been scrapped previously back in 2015.
“We notice that the proposed PJD Link alignment is nearly 90% similar to Kidex and is supposedly being built by the same developer,'” she said.
Toh also stressed that Petaling Jaya residents are “tired and fatigued” of fighting off the same issue as they had vehemently opposed the construction of Kidex in the past.
“It is unfair that we have to keep fending off this issue over and over again. We do not have massive resources to fight off state governments or developers who have deep pockets.
“We have no choice but to resurrect the Say No to Kidex group and keep up the pressure,” she said. – The Vibes, June 24, 2022
