Ipoh City Council has been cutting trees around Ipoh for the last two weeks and Ipoh Echo readers have been calling in to complain. They wanted to know why mature trees were being removed. One call was from an excited caller reporting that MBI was removing “all the remaining Casuarina trees” in front of SM St Michael’s.
A check with MBI’s Landscape Director, Encik Meor Abdullah Zaidi, revealed that “the root system of the SMI Casuarina trees were not healthy and could be in danger of being uprooted in the event of a heavy storm”.
He gave an example of the heavy 5-minute storm in March this year which uprooted two Casuarina trees in front of the school that luckily had landed onto Ipoh Padang. Meor added that the SMI trees would be replaced but “would be replanted inside of Ipoh Padang along the perimeter fencing”.
Similarly, SM St Michael’s PTA President, Joseph Michael Lee, thanked Mayor Roshidi and MBI “for their prompt decision and action for removing the unhealthy trees as the safety of their students can never be compromised”.
Regarding the tree-cutting exercise, Meor explained that MBI had initiated this exercise since September as part of their pre-emptive measure “to reduce the load of trees when a heavy storm breezes through Ipoh” and thus avoiding any uprooted and falling tree incidents during the year-end rainy season. The exercise included trimming of trees and if their root system was not healthy, the tree would be removed.
Meor gave the example of the tree root system of several large trees in Greentown. Although their tree root system was healthy the ground could not support the tree and “they had to be cut down”.
JAG
