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HERITAGE Home Book Review Comment Concerns Concordance Heritage News People Page 11	The Poodle that became an Elephant Lim Kean Siew recalls the planned hawkers paradise on Prangin River THE AMOUNT OF EXCITEMENT generated today about the need to preserve our cultural "heritage" brings my mind back to the time when independence brought the responsibility back to the people for the first time. It was fortunate that it also brought the Socialist Front into power in the City Council of Georgetown, then the only developed town in Penang. That was not so earlier. At that time there was no awareness or understanding of "heritage". Most of the development lay in the demolition of old property for "development. Only the other day the "colonial" heritage of the Sungei Petani police station was torn down without any protest, for the car park of our new police station to be built. When I mentioned that it was a historic and a beautiful symbol of colonialism the British had established on the island, I was immediately challenged for my views. "How can you say the police station built in 1922 by the British is beautiful and should be preserved. It was ugly!" Appalled by this emotional outburst, I was reduced to silence. Surely "heritage" must mean anything of historical and cultural interest whether we personally liked it politically or not. I was in politics on the arrival of independence and I remembered the hostility engendered at the idea of keeping any memory of British colonisation of the country, including the use of English, probably becoming an international language; though some were quite willing to maintain any vestige of Malayism in Penang.
Socialist Front	I was also in the Socialist Front when it won control of the city of Georgetown (virtually the island) then, being the Chairman of the pre Council group and chairman of the building and town planning committee which quickly assumed the responsibility of coping with the periodic floods inundating with traffic and the alleviation of the living conditions in the slums and the poorer sections of Georgetown We began by building new flats and homes where ever we could, both in the Malay and non-Malay areas. But let us deal only with Prangin Road and its canal and its immediate surrounds in which the oldest and poorest and most neglected were to be found. To cut matters short, let us deal with the Prangin Canal into which the waters flowed to find their way out to sea. It was the drainage area of the City and the lowest part of the town where it was almost at sea level at high tide. It would explain why it was the Canal into which padi boats would bring the rice harvest from the mainland to the Khye Heng Bee rice mill's drying yards which was later converted to the Great World Park. It was an area of great historical interest since Burmah Road, called "Chia Chooi" because our sweet water from the Waterfall Gardens was brought down by a pipe to supply the population living in the downtown areas.
Dirty, Smelly Canal	The Canal, which had become a ditch was dirty, smelly and continuously choked by refuse brought down by the drains and this impeded the flow of waster into the sea. When we began to examine the problem, we found we could build some new homes such as in Kampong Selut and Kampong Pisang and the Peoples' Court. We could start cleaning up the drains. But we could not cope with the level of the land and the high tides which would not only stop drainage into the sea for a few hours a day unless we built tidal gates and instal a system of pumps both to be operated automatically by tide levels and a system of drain diversion. There was also the problem of providing an area for the famous hawkers of Penang and the solution for the wastage of land utilized for the storage of materials for our water department behind the Fire Engine station where Komtar is today and, turning the fire station back to front so that the fire engines could ingress and egress the station through the hind portion without cluttering up and being blocked by traffic in Penang Road.; there was little we could do on our own and without proper plans.
Beautification	The problem had to be tackled together with the beautification of this part of the City with the land of the Great World Park, Prangin Canal, using the confluence of Burmah Penang Prangin and Maxwell Roads as a focal point where a small building of no more than ten stories would be erected for the paying counters and services of the City Council, Electricity, and licensing departments to be shifted from the old Esplanade which was out of touch of the bus routes and less assessable to the poor. In this way we would heighten the utilisation of Penang Road as the central point of Penang instead of truncating it, as has been done, into a three section one way traffic thoroughfare system. We could see the job was too large for us and we were in short supply of funds. We had to have a plan and it had to be practical and the co-operation of many specialist brains. At that time, a young architect Lim Chong Keat used to come up to Penang for some weekends when, through the kind offices of Abdul Majid who worked in the Council, we used to meet and he as anxious to help us and he was available. We had no spare architect and he was not too particular of his fees and job specification. On the agreement that if he was used for the layout plan he would not be able to tender for the building plan as it might be prejudicial, I recommended to the committee and it was agreed that we use him to draw up the layout plans. He was to submit a layout plan for, I think, a modest fee of $2000/= or $2300/=.
Hawkers Paradise	It was part of our plan to build a walkway for hawkers all along and over the Canal to connect Carnarvon Street to Penang Road with a bus station with an open air restaurant at the Carnarvon Street end for bus travellers waiting for friends or buses, shaded from the hot sun and so open as to allow the escape of exhaust fumes. And with a collection centre for revenue payers as is now done at the Komtar. The walkway would become a "hawkers' paradise" in the evenings as was announced by Councillor Patkunam at that time whilst it would help as a shade for a car park below. The walkway would branch up the road behind the fire station and this was immediately done and we asked Lim Cheng Ean to declare it open as Jalan Cheong Fatt Tze to commemorate the Hakka owner of the mansion in Muntri Street, now a heritage building named after him. It was an idea we, or I, at least, had thought of - something not too large that someone else could not think of changing at not too high a cost. But before we could finish our planning, the City Council was taken over by the State and our authority was terminated. I had thought of a poodle and not the elephant that it has eventually become. I do not know how it happened because the Tunku dissolved the local councils sometime in 1963 and put everything into the hands of the state council with little experience of council affairs. Since I had ceased to be a local councillor and not a state councillor till the Komtar was built by Lim Chong Eu when he came back from the shadows to take over the Penang State in 1969, I cannot imagine how I could be responsible for this elephant of a Komtar as some people seemed to have been persuaded to believe.
	For questions of heritage: The Penang Heritage Trust www.pht.org.my
The Penang File Issue 9	Home Book Review Comment Concerns Concordance Heritage News People Page 11