A con­trac­tor is apol­o­gis­ing to Diego Mar­tin res­i­dents, who were af­fect­ed by a flood­ing, sludge and rub­ble on the week­end of May 18.

The ar­eas most im­pact­ed were the Diego Mar­tin Main Road near Ju­lia Av­enue and Daniel Road.

How­ev­er, the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion (TCPD) and the Diego Mar­tin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion (DM­BC) both said no ap­provals were giv­en for the work to be done.

Con­trac­tor Hamad Ab­dul­lah ex­plained that he pur­chased the land be­tween Ju­lia Av­enue and Agnes Field Road ear­li­er this year for $150,000 where he planned to con­struct a na­ture park and trade school.

He said once he builds a drain, the flood­ing, which oc­curred from May 17 to 18, will not hap­pen again.

“Hold Strain, hold a lil strain we will bring it home. Just give us a lil time, you all will see an ac­tive drain, a prop­er box drain that will di­vert all the wa­ter from the hill to the main drain.

“I seek to bet­ter my­self. There is a le­gal road re­serve in Ju­lia (Av­enue) that comes straight up the moun­tain, so any­one who is on the lands is le­gal to cut the road,” he ex­plained.

On the week­end of May 17 -18, an ad­verse weath­er alert led to heavy rain­fall which brought down sludge and rub­ble from the hill on­to the main road af­fect­ing mo­torists and res­i­dents as mud al­so went in­to peo­ple’s prop­er­ties.

Res­i­dents com­plained about the con­struc­tion and blamed their woes on the con­trac­tor/land own­er and the on­go­ing works.

Ab­dul­lah said he’s not too con­cerned about get­ting any struc­ture up but rather wants to con­tain the sludge and rub­ble com­ing off the hill. He claimed the cur­rent drain was blocked which he be­lieves es­ca­lat­ed the is­sue.

Of­fi­cials from the DM­BC said the mat­ter is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The cor­po­ra­tion said Ab­dul­lah has not been grant­ed any ap­provals for the con­struc­tion works as no ap­pli­ca­tion from TCPD or En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) clear­ance has been for­ward­ed to them.

“The site has al­so been vis­it­ed by the build­ing in­spec­torate and the tech­ni­cal de­part­ment of the cor­po­ra­tion on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions and on some of these vis­its Mr Ab­dul­lah would have been ad­vised to cease the clear­ing works,” the DM­BC said.

The cor­po­ra­tion of­fi­cial said Ab­dul­lah was giv­en one Stop No­tice and two Show-cause No­tices, the lat­est on May 19.

The DM­BC said the build­ing in­spec­torate de­part­ment was li­ais­ing with EMA and the Land Man­age­ment Di­vi­sion on the mat­ter.

The TCDP al­so said its of­fi­cials con­duct­ed a joint site vis­it with the EMA on April 22 where it was ob­served that de­vel­op­ment con­trary to the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Act was be­ing car­ried out. It said the work was be­ing done with­out a grant of plan­ning per­mis­sion on forest­ed lands, in­clud­ing cut­ting of a hill­side, clear­ing and re­moval of top­soil and ex­ca­vat­ing the land cre­at­ing an ac­cess road.

The ac­cess road will con­nect Ju­lia Av­enue to Anges Road which is an ex­ten­sion to Uni­ty Road. Uni­ty Road is part of Rich Plain Road in Diego Mar­tin.

The TCPD said no ap­pli­ca­tion was sub­mit­ted for the cer­tifi­cate of en­vi­ron­men­tal clear­ance to the EMA.

“The En­force­ment Unit con­tin­ues to con­duct ti­tle search­es to as­cer­tain the cur­rent ti­tle­hold­er of the lands where the unau­tho­rised de­vel­op­ment is be­ing un­der­tak­en and has is­sued a let­ter of ad­vice to Mr Ab­dul­lah for­mal­ly no­ti­fy­ing of the al­leged breach of plan­ning reg­u­la­tions,” TCDP said.

Ab­dul­lah lat­er ad­mit­ted to Guardian Me­dia that he start­ed work on the land be­fore ap­provals were grant­ed but said he has since sent the rel­e­vant doc­u­men­ta­tion to all of­fi­cials and was await­ing feed­back. The con­trac­tor said he planned to fol­low up with the agen­cies.