Mohd Noorazam planting a Chinese willow tree near Sungai Sri Buntan in Bandar Baru Uda, Johor Baru.
A SONAR alert system will be placed at Sungai Chat near Johor Baru city centre to notify the public if water reaches a critical level and a flash flood is imminent.
Johor Baru mayor Datuk Mohd Noorazam Osman said the city council (MBJB) was in the final phase of discussing the matter before a pilot project was initiated.
“We are in talks with the company that provides this service, as they have experience placing this system in Kudat, Sabah and Subang Jaya, Selangor.
“The system will send a notification to the cellphone in case the water rises to a certain level,” he told reporters after the tree-planting programme at Sungai Sri Buntan, Bandar Baru Uda in Johor Baru.
Mohd Noorazam also said that more than 100 MBJB Skuad Kilat and Southern Volunteers members were on standby to help move flood victims to temporary relief centres.
“The council has deployed 50 Skuad Kilat personnel to patrol 36 hotspots or flood-prone areas in MBJB’s jurisdiction, together with our clean-up crew that is in charge of ensuring all drainage systems are clean,” he added.
Mohd Noorazam said the current infrastructure needs in Johor Baru should be re-evaluated to ensure it could adapt to the changes in weather in the future.
“Our current infrastructure, especially the drainage system, was developed based on 100-year weather predictions, but due to climate change, it could no longer sustain the increasing water volume.
“Even our daily rainfall reading has gone up to 100mm from the usual 30mm,” he said.
As a short-term solution, the council had awarded 10 contracts to deepen rivers and build flood pools to hold more water and slow down the water current, he added.
On the tree-planting programme, Mohd Noorazam said it was conducted with the help of Affin Islamic Bank Bhd as part of the company’s corporate social responsibility initiative.
The bank’s acting chief executive officer Ferdaus Toh Abdullah said the company planned to plant 2,000 trees this year in line with its environmental, social and governance (ESG) agenda.
“To date, we have planted 1,500 Chinese willow trees, and we expect to achieve our target by year’s end.
“Johor is the third location for this initiative after Penang and Melaka,” he said, hoping for public cooperation to take care of the trees.
