PRESS RELEASE
Date: 07 APRIL 2025 (MONDAY)

PUTRA HEIGHTS GAS EXPLOSION: FEDERAL GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO FORM UTILITIES INFRASTRUCTURES RISK ASSESSMENT TASKFORCE

Incidents involving utility infrastructures may not just end with incident like Putra Heights gas explosion if concrete measures are not put in place. Urban sinkhole in Masjid India involving a sewerage infrastructure, damages involving water supply main trunk burst and many more incidents not only disrupt services rendered but also cause serious harm to people like what we saw in Putra Heights incident.

Many Right of Way (ROW) lands were introduced when our country was improving services to people and businesses. Over a period of time, especially in land-locked location, more developments moved closer to ROW sites. There are cases where road widening caused some utility pipes to be laid underneath active traffic flow.

As we move forward, we need to reassess and identify potential risks and outline mitigation measures that are suitable to avert future incidents. Association of Water and Energy Research Malaysia (AWER) and Centre for Water and Energy Sustainability (CWES) would like to urge the Federal Government to form National Taskforce of Utilities Infrastructures Risk Assessment. The federal level taskforce must be supported by State Level taskforce as well.

Below are the terms of reference (TOR) that AWER and CWES would like to suggest:
(i)    Mapping of ROW and utility services connection areas that have been encroached either with approval or without;
(ii)    Identifying ROW and utility service connection areas that pass high population density areas, high traffic flow areas, high risk areas due to external factor locations, etc;
(iii)    Identifying methods or technology apparatus that can be used to mitigate the risks;
(iv)    Catagorise the risks identified based on severity scale versus mitigation cost;
(v)    Identify legal apparatus to prevent or minimise encroachment to ROW and utility service connection areas;
(vi)    Applying strict standards and approval processes for third party access to ROW and utility service connection areas for laying pipes or other infrastructure developments;
(vii)    Suruhanjaya Perkhidmatan Air Negara (SPAN) and Suruhanjaya Tenaga (ST) have to play its role to vet through the identified risk and its mitigations as well as submit technical report to the taskforce;
(viii)    Outline stakeholder engagement and involvement in Emergency Response Plan (ERP) to increase awareness and quick response in case an unwanted incident takes place; and
(ix)    Publish the findings and proposed approaches for public knowledge and feedback.

While we are still recovering from the devastation caused by the gas explosion in Putra Heights, we must also look forward to prevent such incidents from reoccurring. Thus, AWER and CWES urges Prime Minister, relevant ministries and state governments to speed up the formation of the taskforce as an immediate preventive step.


Piarapakaran S.
President
Association of Water and Energy Research Malaysia (AWER)
&
Chief Executive Officer
Centre for Water and Energy Sustainability (CWES)