KUALA LUMPUR – The high court has struck out the Penang government’s bid to challenge the Environment Department’s (DoE) revocation of the state’s first environmental impact assessment (EIA) report on the massive Penang South Island (PSI) reclamation project.
The Edge reported that the Kuala Lumpur High Court today dismissed the state government’s judicial review application because it filed the matter out of time.
Penang should have filed its judicial review application by December 7 last year, three months after the appeal board decided to revoke its initial approval of the EIA on September 8, judge Datuk Wan Ahmad Farid Wan Salleh was reported as saying by The Edge.
Instead, the state filed on December 17. The high court deputy registrar then struck out the application as it was out of time.
Wan Ahmad Farid today said that the state’s subsequent application for a time extension could not be allowed as the state did not provide detailed grounds for its late filing.
“Since the extension of time is dismissed, this court is not seized with the jurisdiction to hear the merits of the judicial review application,” the judge was quoted as saying.
Penang’s first EIA on the reclamation project to make three artificial islands off Bayan Lepas had initially been approved by the DoE, but it was revoked last September after objections from fishermen who said the project would affect their livelihoods.
The fishermen were led in their protest by Zakaria Ismail, whom the Penang government had named along with the appeal board as respondents in its judicial review application.
The PSI project is meant to fund the state’s RM46 billion transport master plan.
The state has since submitted a second EIA report to the DoE for consideration.
In an immediate response, Penang exco for infrastructure Zairil Khir Johari said the state government will discuss the court’s decision, with the state legal adviser on hand to brief the exco. – The Vibes, August 29, 2022
