Bukit Larut likely to get cable car service
Sunday August 5, 2007
TheStar


TAIPING: Visitors going up to Bukit Larut will soon be able to do so by cable car.

A private company, now operating the cable car system in Langkawi, is expected to get the approval to operate the cable car service at Bukit Larut.

It is now looking for possible sites to build a station to house ticket booths.

The company approached the state government with the cable car proposal in April. It felt that the project was viable because 700,000 people visit the Taiping Zoo compared with 100,000 visitors in Langkawi.

The state government did not give its approval then because it feared protests from environmentalists and nature lovers who successfully stopped a similar project in the 1990s.

State Public Utility and Infrastructures Committee chairman Datuk Ho Cheng Wang said the final decision would only be made after more discussions with the company.

Ho said that unlike previously, the current proposal did not involve any exchange of prime land at the Lake Gardens nor major physical development projects that could affect the eco-system at Bukit Larut whose foothill had been designated as a water catchment area.

He also said that the state government had approved a RM3mil allocation to build two blocks of bungalows on Bukit Larut which could accommodate more than 100 overnight visitors.

A jeep service is now used for trips up to Bukit Larut, which was formerly known as Maxwell Hill.

Bukit Larut likely to get cable car service

A private company, now operating the cable car system in Langkawi, is expected to get the approval to operate the cable car service at Bukit Larut.

That private company...is Panorama Langkawi Sdn. Bhd...owned by SPNB...how can company owned by a company owned by the Ministry of Finance be considered "private"?

http://www.langkawicablecar.com.my/profile.htm

Cheers, m

a 'Sendirian Berhad/Sdn. Bhd.' means...private lah

a 'Sendirian Berhad/Sdn. Bhd.' means...private lahyes, Im aware that Sdn. Bhd. means "Private Limited" and is used to denote a private company.

My concern is about transparency. If a public company can own private companies, there can be many different problems.

Because the newspaper wrote "a private company...." Im worried that this is leak and prelude to a sneak development and I want to know who is planning it...

SPNB owns that "private company" and MOF owns SPNB, so the orders are coming from the Federal Government

Cheers, m

in malaysia, we have a policy, called 'Dasar Pensyarikatan Malaysia'(i don't know the term in english). this policy enables government via any agencies/corporate bodies to set up a company(private company) to do or join any business which government thinks nobody will do/refuse to do...

or for any special tasks.....for example lah...

so for this case, the Panorama Langkawi was set up to build the cable car for Langkawi(maybe during that time, other private company refuses to take part for the project).

so then, since it is a private company, they are free to do business for their own company's profit(the profit never go to MoF).

50 stranded overnight on Bukit Larut
Monday August 27, 2007
By RASLAN BAHAROM
TheStar

TAIPING: A spate of landslides at Bukit Larut, a popular hill station here left about 50 overnight visitors stranded on the hill over the weekend.

Most of the landslides occurred between kilometre 5 and kilometre 7 of the 13km-long winding road leading up to the hill, preventing jeeps from taking the visitors down so that they could go home.

Fifteen of the visitors, including six children between the ages two and 12 years made their way down the hill about noon Monday with the help of district office staff who came in a jeep. The jeep was stopped a safe distance away from the first landslide at kilometre 5.

On Saturday evening, 38 students and teachers from SK Tinggi, Kajang, Selangor, also made their way down the hill on foot.

There was an unconfirmed report that one of the students suffered a bone fracture after he slipped while going down the hill.

District officer Datuk Mahmod Morsidi could not be reached for comment but it is learnt that the hill has been closed to the public for an indefinite period pending repair work being undertaken by contractors assigned by the district Public Works Department (PWD).

About noon Monday, an excavator was seen clearing mounts of earth along the affected stretch and some of the workers at the scene said some portions of the tarred road further up the hill had partly collapsed.

A Road Transport Department employee, Hartini Samad, 26 who was among the 15 visitors who got down the hill safely Monday said she and her children were supposed to go down the hill on Sunday morning after spending a night at one of the bungalows on the hill.

However, she was told by a district office staff that there was no jeep to take them down as the road had been blocked by the landslides following heavy rainfall on Saturday night.

"There was adequate food supply at the bungalow and we were not worried about our safety either as the district office staff were around to guide us down the hill," she said.

However, she said the children had some anxious moments when electric supply went out about 2am Monday.

Meanwhile in Taman Simpang Bakti here about 500 residents fled their homes after Sungai Batu Tegoh overflowed its bank early Sunday.

They can now rest easy as the district Drainage and Irrigation Department (DID) has repaired a broken bund, the source of the flash flood.

One of the residents, Amarulizam Aulun Azmi, 36, said he hoped the repaired river bund would be strengthened further.

"The bund, located at a sharp bend, was repaired using only sand scooped by excavators from the river bed and I don't think it can withstand excessive water pressure," said Amirulziman who works with a construction company.

should build cablecar up to Cameron Highland aswell

EIA not needed for cable car project
Friday August 31, 2007
TheStar


TAIPING: The company undertaking the proposed RM60mil cable car system to Bukit Larut does not have to submit an Environmental Impact Assessment report.

Department of Environment Taiping branch chief Nasir Abdul Rahman said the report was only required if the project involved massive construction activities.

“Since the project in Bukit Larut only involved the construction of towers which utilises small plots of land, the project is not subjected to an EIA requirement,” he said.

Nasir said the company had de- liberated on the cable car pro- ject with the Bukit Larut development committee recently and it was agreed that no EIA report was needed as it was only a recreation project.

He said an EIA report was a must for projects like housing involving more than 50ha.

However in Perak, he added, the requirement had been tightened to over 20ha.

Although the project has not been approved by the state exco, the company and its representatives briefed Pokok Assam state assemblyman Datuk Ho Cheng Wang and the lo- cal media yesterday on the system which had been successfully implemented in Langkawi.

“Original vegetation on the hill will be left untouched and the construction of each tower will only utilise a small plot of about 10m by 10m,” Alan Tan, the consultant of the project said.

Tan said he was aware that the foothill of Bukit Larut had been gazetted as a water catchment area.

“Our cable car project in Langkawi was also built in a water catchment area and the environment there is not polluted,” he said.

Tan said more than a dozen towers would be built to support the 4.9km-long cables to bring gondolas carrying passengers up and down the Bukit Larut.

The base station would be built at a vacant plot near the Casuarina Inn and the Taiping New Club at the Lake Garden here. The tower station would be built about 1,009m up on the hill.

However, Ho cautioned the company to make the necessary adjustments for the base station as the proposed site would often be flooded during the rainy season.

“We don’t want the town to be flooded once the base station is completed,” he said.

Earlier Tan told the briefing that the existing jeep service which visitors depended on to go up the hill could only accommodate about 200 visitors daily whereas the cable car system would be able to bring about 1,000 visitors per day.

“Construction materials will be transported to the tower sites using helicopters so as to protect the hill’s natural vegetation,” he said.

Ho, who is also state Infrastructure and Public Utility Committee chairman, asked for public feedback before the company kicked off the project.