Kelantan floods: Are poor barrier design cause of worsening Rantau Panjang floods?
KOTA BHARU - Located next to the famous Sungai Golok, the Malaysia-Thailand border, flood issues in Pasir Mas and Rantau Panjang remains a major concern in Kelantan.
Sinar Daily visited this location to look at the reasons for yearly floods in the these areas.
To overcome flooding, the state government had developed a flood barrier in Sungai Lanchang and Pasir Mas between 2018 and 2019.
However, Pakatan Harapan Kelantan member Dr Wan Shah Jihan Wan Din claimed poor flood barrier design caused Rantau Panjang floods to worsen.
He said it was true that the barriers prevented floods in the central areas of Pasir Mas and Tumpat but not in Rantau Panjang.
To address this issue, a loose coalition called ‘Save Kelantan’ appointed drainage engineers to study and evaluate the flood barrier.
"These experts explained that the mitigation design was not the best. The current flood barrier does not follow the appropriate standards and does not reflect the climate change we are experiencing now," he claimed.
Due to this, he said people in Rantau Panjang experience severe flooding problems, and last year alone, they experienced floods twice, Wan Shah added.
To solve flooding issues, the experts had advised an artificial river to be constructed to channel water load from Sungai Lanchang into the artificial river to the sea in Tumpat district.
He said Natural Resources, Environment, and Climate Change Minister Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad has accepted the proposal to build the artificial river after a site visit to the area.
"Recently, Nik Nazmi has already given instructions to make a new drainage system; however, this is still a short term solution," he added.
