Trees are significant in urban settings as they make the cities greener and give shelter to people and animals alike.
Sometimes, the trees get very tall, and it might disrupt the telephone/electricity lines, and impatient with overgrown trees, a company director in Kuantan took matters into his own hands and went ahead and ordered several trees outside his building to be cut!
The trees were chopped – but turns out the authorities were very unhappy with that.
According to the Facebook post by the Kuantan City Council, the company director was fined RM5,000 for chopping down the City Council’s tree (diameter of more than 0.8 meters) without their permission. This is illegal under section 35H (1) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1976.
It is said that the trees were chopped on May 14. When brought to court, the company director pleaded guilty when his charges were read.
Netizens in the comments did not understand why the person was fined for just cutting a tree.
“I cannot brain this. There are many things that MBK did not take care of and did not check. The branches are already touching the electric wires and even lorries. People chop the tree off then they get compounded. Please do your job well. Look carefully. The tree roots have gone under the roads and broken the cement walls. You only know how to saman people.”
“It’s good that the citizens are using their money to chop off the trees. The rakyat even pays the capital for that. It gives comfort and security to the road users there. The person did nothing wrong for me as it helped MBK too.”
The city council explained to a netizen that there are specific procedures before chopping off a tree belonging to the city council.
“It’s good that the public took the initiative to chop the tree. If we’re waiting for MBK, it may not be chopped off by next year.”
The city council replied: “Don’t belittle (this issue). An expert will check if the trees will need to be chopped or not.”
From this, we know not to touch the city councils’ trees! Remember, if there is a tree that is overgrown, you can make a complaint to your local city council! In this scenario, taking matters into your own hands was not the best course of action.
