Reflections

this is my second third project as a citizen/video journalist. the first was during pakatan’s 1st anniversary gathering at the esplanade on 7 march, where 4 of us, lilian, lim and leow were there; second one on 14 march when 5 of us (the same 4 L’s, plust koh) were out on the streets after 11.00am to interview the homeless people. yesterday, there were only 2 of us, lim and i where we went to the tanjung bungah residents association (TBRA) ‘tea party’  hill-slopes protest.

it was actually a ‘coffee party’ as coffee was served instead. this was the 2nd protest the TBRA held. the first one was in feb where they used pots and pans to bang. this coffee party protest was held at solok tan jit seng (behind the tg bungah secondary school) because it was where the dangerous hill-slopes project can be seen. seemed that over 20 trees had been cut down for the project and the hill-slope has a gradient of 68 degrees!

TBRA members wants the penang government to ban class 3 (a gradient of 25 – 35%) and class 4 (a gradient of over 35%) it seemed that, this hill project’s gradient is 68%! imagine! so much higher than class 4! can’t blame the residents for living in fear that some disaster is waiting to happen.

there were a number of press present for this protest. the VIP present ere YB teh, the assemblyman from tanjung bungah and YB phee, exco for social welfare and environment department.  the CM was invited but he sent YB phee instead. YB phee said that halfway through, the CM called him to check if the turned up!

the TBRA members who protested against the hill slopes development had called themselves ‘leading action committee against dangerous hill-slopes development’.  they put up so many posters, big and small along the fencing wall of the hill where a project was going on.

andrew aeria started off the speech as an introduction. he said the main aim of the protest is to make the government listen. he talked a lot about voting for change but why they don’t see a change in the new government. the government is not listening to them.

when yb teh (picture below) was called to speak, andrew introduced him as the ‘people’s yb’. seemed that yb teh had been very supportive of their protests and had voiced their concerns to the top (learned that later during the interview).

yb phee (picture below, purple shirt) was called to speak. he said he came to the protest to face the people. he said he didn’t want to appear as hiding from them! couldn’t remember what he said that made someone shouted “political talk!” which sort of made him annoyed!

lee laine, the vice chairman of TBRA was next to speak where she talked about some of the existing projects going on like the bolton project and diamond villa.

a resident, ismail, spoke with lots of passion as he has a daughter who studied in the school nearby. he said the hill slope project posed danger to the school children. what if a disaster like the bukit antarabangsa tragedy happened, he asked, will the government said it is an act of god?

michael chen, who has a house in solok tan jit seng, spoke about the awarding of approval plans. he hinted that there were a lot of corruption going on among the councillors and the umnoputera in the approval of plans for theh hill-slope projects during the previous government time, and he challenged  the present government to open the files of the project approval and investigate, and they would be able to find discrepancies in the approval. thus, in this way, he felt the projects could be halted.

after the speeches, i approached YB teh to interview him, with lim behind the camera. he is a nice person and answered all my questions well. hope to see the video up soon and listen to what he had said.

i also managed to talk to YB phee after his interview (by lim). when he mentioned about the governemnt trying best to help the poor and eradicating hardcore poor, i told him that the government is not doing enough because, i know there are still many poor out there. yes i should know since i’m from the society of st vincent de paul, a society that helps the poor regularly by giving them either cash aid or ration aid. he said that i should register those poor people so that the government will be aware of them.

after almost everybody had gone back, lee laine suggested we went to pearl hill recreational park where she can show us the development at the beach area. YB phee also went along, together with anil netto and 3 other TBRA members. this picture below was taken from the top of the hill, overlooking the sea. as you can see there are 4 high-rise towers sticking out like a sore thumb!  the tower blocks being closed to each other, according to laine, is environmentally not good since they blocked the air from one side (but the two towers in the centre, blocked from both sides!). also note that the towers were very close to the sea.

after coming back from the park, i did a stand-upper for the video. ‘stand-upper’ is documentary term for a person who appears right in the beginning of the video to introduce what the video is all about. since it was my first time doing it, was quite nervous. had to do a few re-takes!

well looking forward to the video to be ready soon. if maran, our malayisakini trainer sees it fit to put up at malaysiakini tv, good lah but if not, we will put it up on you tube anyway.

you can read about the report at anil netto’s blog too.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 1:26 am and is filed under Issues, Penang. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.