GEORGE TOWN, Oct 19 — An environmental group today urged the state government to stop all major infrastructure projects near hillslopes following the landslide at a construction site of a paired road project along Jalan Paya Terubong today.

Sahabat Alam Malaysia secretary Meenakshi Raman said they are “fed up” with such incidents especially when just a year ago, 11 people were killed in a landslide in Tanjung Bungah on October 21.

“How many more lives have to be lost before the state takes such incidents seriously,” she said in a press conference outside the landslide site here.

In the 2pm incident today, a landslide at the construction site brought down six containers and several wooden shacks, all of which were workers’ quarters and buried up to 13 people underneath.

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The fire and rescue department already found two bodies and rescued one victim alive who was sent to the Penang Hospital for treatment.

Meenakshi said the incident showed that there are no proper monitoring done at massive infrastructure projects by the hillside.

“We have warned a lot against hillslopes development and the state government has said they have enforcement, but this still happened, it shows we can’t trust them,” she said.

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She demanded to know why the hillslopes of between 60 to 90 degrees at the construction site were left exposed especially during rainy season.

“Now, they want to build more highways by the hillslopes such as Pan Island Link 1 and the North Coast Pair Road,” she said.

Meenakshi said the state authorities can’t just approve the projects and leave it to the contractors and engineers to monitor and regulate the safety of the project site.

She said the onus is on the state authorities and also the Department of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) to monitor safety issues at construction sites.

Soil expert Kam Suan Peng said they have submitted reports on the hill condition of Bukit Kukus where the construction project is underway.

“We have raised our concerns against the development twice,” she said.

She said parts of the cleared Bukit Kukus were exposed to the elements for between one to two years.

“They merely covered it with plastic cover which is not sufficient to protect the exposed hillslopes,” she said.

Kam pointed out that just last week, 11 concrete beams fell down at the construction site of the same project.

Last year, the state government said the Tanjung Bungah landslide which killed 11 construction workers at a housing project site were a “work site accident”.