KUALA LUMPUR, July 27 ― The Selangor government will move to recover land awarded to the Education Ministry if there are no plans to develop the parcels, Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Azmin Ali said.
The PKR deputy president said the move was necessary to ensure that the land is not sold for commercial purposes or left idle.
“We want to know if the ministry already has plans to build schools on the land given by the state government or not.
“If there are no plans, we will take the land back to build public facilities or leave it as an open space,” he was quoted as saying to local Malay daily Sinar Harian.
He noted that the Selangor government did not have the jurisdiction to build schools on the land as that is the purview of the ministry, but added that his administration was willing to facilitate Putrajaya.
The daily also reported Azmin as saying that the state government has identified several parcels of land awarded to the federal government for the construction of public facilities such as hospitals and schools, but no plans have been formulated for up to 10 years.
The PKR lawmaker further said that there have been instances where state land given to the federal government was in turn sold to private entities and then used for commercial purposes.
“We don’t want a repeat of this. The land was awarded to them but then it was sold,” he was quoted as saying.
