Issues-driven seminar on mitigating landslide

Ministry of Housing, Local Government and Urban Well-Being (KPKT) together with the Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) is coordinating a seminar to tackle issues and challenges pertaining landslides, landslips and slope-related incidents that continue to spate our country.

Many incremental changes have been made since the major landslides in Malaysia (Highland Towers 20 years ago, Bukit Antarabangsa 5 years ago, Ulu Langat 4 years ago) in improving our slope management.

However, in spite of these changes, problems continue to persist.

Some of the reasons are due to current engineering practices, some for insufficient monitoring and enforcement, others are lack of awareness among slope builders and slope owners on the requirements, and all are due to lack of dialogue and coordination among the various players at different levels.

Named “Overcoming Challenges and The Way Forward”, this seminar is unique because it is issues-driven, focusing on factors that hold back a smoother system in managing and ensuring safer slopes in the country, instead of the typical seminar where the focus is mainly on technical aspects of slope engineering.

This seminar aims to mitigate landslide, at the same time to seriously consider the suggestions and recommendations from all levels of society where participants from the government, private and community sectors will discuss and identify a collaborative course of action towards better slope planning, designing, construction, monitoring, maintenance and enforcement.

Feature speakers will provide their various key standpoints in the current slope situation as well as what the future holds for our local slopes.

The speakers are, Ir Dr Hassandi Abdullah from JKR, Tan Sri Ramon Navaratnam and Eriko Motoyama from SlopeWatch, Ir Ahmad Redza Ghulam Rasool of KPKT, Ir Zafrul Fazry Mohd Fauzi, Derek Fernandez and Datuk Ir Dr Gue See Sew.

Datuk Ir Dr Gue See Sew, who is the CEO of G&P Professionals and also the Chairman for Expert Standing Committee on Slope Safety, said, there are two parts of the slope management issues that is of the great concern for all.

“The first part relies on the practice of the stakeholders, like the developers, engineers, contractors and architects who need to look at the performance of existing guidelines. How can we enhance safety? And on the government side, anything that is of regulatory – what do they need to do to improve?”

“I found out that the glaring part would be that the local authorities lack expertise. So we need a centralised body to assist these 149 local authorities, but it needs of course, the people and the budget” Gue added.

Gue also said that realigning some of the resources and focus on the areas that can actually build up capacity, can improve this practice. And these are the things that will be addressed during the seminar, in early May.

For a community program run by residents who monitor slopes in their neighbourhood for signs of landslides and conduct simple maintenance of slopes called SlopeWatch, this NGO is all geared up to present issues and challenges in starting up and running a slope monitoring program within communities and its plans of follow up action that will benefit attendees of the seminar who are interested in starting up one in their own communities, or for the authorities who want to know how such a monitoring program works.

“We will bring up issues and problems encountered in implementation, such as the speed in follow-up responses and stakeholder communication. Bringing up problems to the other slope stakeholders and players is important” said Eriko.

“SlopeWatch is excited to be working on this seminar with CIDB and the Ministry of Housing since we are all sharing the same kinds of problems regarding slope management, but we’re handling it in isolation. As they say, the whole is better than the sum of all parts because now there can be linkages and joint problem solving” she added.

In the past, SlopeWatch has played vital role in conducting awareness and conducting awareness and education programs to communities who have stated a need for monitoring programs. It has been helping communities in reporting slope issues to their local authorities.

This year SlopeWatch focuses on improvements in the process between the communities, local authorities and SlopeWatch and with this upcoming seminar as a set off, SlopeWatch will continue to work with the agencies and authorities on improving the slope management system

“If we were to give a phrase to what we will be doing this year, it would be: contributing towards improving the policy and institutional framework in slope management” said Eriko.

This seminar will be held on the 7th May 2014 at the CIDB Convention Centre, Kuala Lumpur.

For further details on seminar, contact:

Tel No : 012-611 7820 / 012-382 1105

Email : seminar@gprop.com.my

Fax : 03-2050 2715