Friday, July 01, 2011

Transforming Kuala Lumpur's Dirty Rivers

The River of Life project to tranform KL's dirty rivers into an attractive waterfront suitable for tourism is indeed a noble task. But wait, this project only involved (1) River Cleaning (2) River Beautification and (3) Corridor development.
NOTHING mentioned about educating the public on the trash floating in the river. A large part of the budget will be collecting rubbish, manning rubbish traps and dumping rubbish (i.e. river cleaning). It will be a big waste of our tax money. Educating the public and households along the rivers would help in cutting the unnecessary budget on river cleaning. Control on development along rivers should also be enforced. Until then I see no benefit to the ecology. Riparian wildlife along rivers will lost their living space when concrete corridor development replaced the natural corridor. Amsterdam, London, Melbourne and Paris have already lost their riparian corridors. Why should we make the same mistake in the name of development? Lets wait and see how successful is the project or is it part of the scheme to siphon funds for the coming GE 13?


Friday July 1, 2011 MYT 9:22:07 PM
KL's River of Life project takes off
Star

KUALA LUMPUR: The much-anticipated River of Life project, which aims to revitalise and transform Kuala Lumpur's dirty rivers, has taken off.

“I believe there will be a drastic change to Kuala Lumpur's image," said Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.

"This is what Kuala Lumpur folks have been waiting for.

“The Klang river has all the elements to become an attractive waterfront bustling with daily activities,” he said at the launch of the project to transform the Klang and Gombak rivers into iconic waterfronts on par with big cities such as Amsterdam, London, Melbourne and Paris by 2020 on Friday.

The Greater KL-Klang Valley project is an Entry Point Project under the Government's Economic Transformation Programme.

Najib said the project would contribute RM11.3bil to the country's Gross Domestic Product until 2020.

The RM4bil project is divided into three parts, namely river cleaning which would involve a 110km stretch along the Klang river basin; river beautification along a 10.7km stretch by the Klang and Gombak river corridor which will include pedestrian walkways; and corridor development.

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