KUALA LUMPUR – Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) must plant a hundred new trees for every one cut down, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has said.
On X, he said he had given instructions to the KL mayor to do so.
Along with his comment, Anwar posted a news report on Minister in the Prime MInister’s Department (Federal Territories) Dr Zaliha Mustafa’s orders to DBKL to cut down all high-risk trees in the capital, following the uprooting of several trees in two storms.
The storm on May 7 uprooted a more than 50-year-old tree on Jalan Sultan Ismail, killing a man and injuring another person.
Zaliha’s order to DBKL came after a second storm on May 13 which felled another old tree on Jalan Pinang which damaged several cars and motorcycles. The same storm also saw trees uprooted and toppled in other parts of the city.
On May 10, after the first storm, DBKL said it had identified 175 trees around the city as high-risk since 2019, most of which are more than half a century-old.
Of the total, it said 147 had been cut down in recent years. It also said an exercise in February by certified arborists had identified 28 high-risk trees that would be felled soon.
Zaliha said DBKL had been instructed to cut down high-risk trees immediately and to also improve its tree-management plan with new guidelines to be ready by July.
Reactions on social media to DBKL and Zaliha’s order, however, have been mixed, with some users on X and Facebook supporting the move to axe all old trees, while others have urged Kuala Lumpur to learn from Singapore’s management of its old, large trees.
Malaysian Nature Society executive director Shanmugaraj Subramaniam has noted how urban landscaping methods – such as cutting a tree’s roots on the surface and paving over it with thick cement – weakens the trees and eventually causes uprooting.
This morning, DBKL crews were seen along Lebuhraya Sultan Iskandar and Taman Danau Kota, Setapak, trimming the branches of large trees. – May 15, 2024