Illegal Kranji land clearing: 2 JTC officers plead guilty to cutting trees without approval, lying to hide offence

SINGAPORE — Two officers from industrial site developer JTC Corporation were convicted on Friday (Nov 4) of clearing a forest parcel in Kranji without proper approvals and then trying to mask their crime afterwards.

Neo Jek Lin, 44, a senior project manager at JTC, and Chong Pui Chih, 47, a JTC deputy director, will have their sentences handed to them next Wednesday.

Neo is now suspended from his duties, while Chong is no longer working at the statutory board that managed the project site where land was illegally cleared. 

The duo pleaded guilty to two charges each of cutting down trees with a girth exceeding one metre on vacant land without approval, and another charge of lying within documents to falsely approve the cutting of trees in the area.

Neo also pleaded guilty to another charge of preventing the director-general of NParks' wildlife management from exercising his powers.

Other similar charges for both Neo and Chong were taken into consideration.

WHAT HAPPENED

The matter came to light after a member of the public published a set of photographs on Facebook last year showing a before-and-after aerial comparison of the Kranji site, which was set aside for the development of the Agri-Food Innovation Park.

Located next to Kranji Close and Kranji Road, the innovation park will eventually house high-tech farming as well as research-and-development activities. This includes indoor plant factories, insect farms and animal feed production.

The court heard that the 18.4ha site in Kranji, which is about 26 football fields, was divided into 10 plots, with the 10th plot sub-divided into a further seven plots.

JTC was appointed the project owner and developing agency for the innovation park.

Neo was appointed as the project manager and Chong as Neo’s direct supervisor. Two contractors were also engaged for construction works at the site.

The area was a vacant land with no buildings or structures and therefore, required the felling of existing trees. The Parks and Trees Act prohibits cutting down trees with a girth exceeding one metre without approval from the commissioner of parks and recreation under the National Parks Board (NParks), which enforces the Act.

On July 12 in 2019, the project’s qualified person — who is responsible for carrying out design works, ensuring designs meet statutory requirements and obtaining approvals from authorities — submitted a set of partial plans and sought approval for the felling of trees in plots four, five and nine from NParks.

This was approved on Aug 29, after the qualified person was able to address NParks’ request on updated tree-felling plans.

Court documents stated that in the course of receiving these submissions, NParks found that the development works would involve building a temporary drain that would discharge water from surface run-off into nearby natural waterway Sungei Pang Sua.

This raised concerns that there could be “adverse impact to the environment”.

That was when the agency asked for JTC and CPG Consultancy, a professional development consultancy firm, to address the anticipated environmental impact and submit the plans to mitigate this impact on June 26, 2020 in a form. 

While the qualified person had responded to this request, NParks later issued another form containing its assessment by technical agencies for public projects on Aug 21, 2020. 

In it, NParks directed JTC to “implement the following wildlife-related measures to safeguard the wildlife, public safety and health, and ecosystems”, the court heard.

This included JTC and NParks developing a fauna baseline study and environmental monitoring and management programme, ensuring proper fencing to prevent animals from wandering into the worksite and allowing NParks to conduct plant-salvaging before starting any physical works, among other things.

WORRIED ABOUT DELAY

Knowing that NParks would require the implementation of these measures before they could get approval for cutting down trees in the other Kranji plots, Neo and Chong decided to begin tree felling and site clearance works while trying to satisfy NParks’ directions at the same time.

Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Dhiraj G Chainani said that this was because the two men had been “worried that the development of Kranji Agri-Food Innovation Park would be delayed further”.

DPP Dhiraj also said that the Covid-19 pandemic had halted works for about five months in 2020.

As a result, 362 trees with girths of more than a metre had been cut down without approval in four subplots within plot 10. This was done before Jan 13, 2021.

Court documents did not state the exact date when Neo and Chong had instructed the start of tree-felling works.

They had also cleared out an area in plot one sometime in October 2020, before asking for approval a month later. This was because they had to move their site office, which was located in a plot that was to be handed to another organisation.

Court documents did not state how many trees were cut illegally in this plot.

Beyond that, Neo also pleaded guilty to preventing the director-general of NParks' wildlife management from exercising his powers under the Wildlife Act to stop works at the site.

The court heard that Neo had instructed the qualified person representative to amend a schedule for clearance work to show that the clearance works had not started on the plots at Kranji, even though workers had already cleared the forest on those plots.

At Neo’s request, the representative then sent the falsified schedule to an NParks officer on Sept 25 in 2020, in response to an NParks' request for more information on the state of clearance works at the site.

NEO WAS 'HANDLING SEVERAL PROJECTS'

In court, Neo’s lawyer, Mr Raphael Louis, said that his client had been overseeing four different construction projects at the time and faced tight time pressure, especially with delays caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, he added that Neo is remorseful, having pleaded guilty and being willing to accept punishment, despite the fine submitted by the prosecution being “high”. The public prosecutors had sought a total fine of S$34,000 for Neo.

They also sought a total fine of S$28,000 for Chong.

Chong's lawyer, Senior Counsel Sreenivasan Narayanan, asked for a total fine of S$18,000 instead, noting that she also had been under pressure to catch up with the delays caused by the pandemic.

Describing both Neo and Chong as “dedicated” employees who had made mistakes, he said that both Chong and her family have been “traumatised”.

In response, DPP Nicholas Khoo said that the officers had acted in "gross contravention" of NParks' directions.

Anyone convicted of cutting trees above a one-metre girth that are growing on vacant land or a tree conservation area without approval can be fined up to S$50,000.

If convicted of producing false documents to obtain approval from the commissioner of NParks' parks and recreation, an offender can be fined up to S$30,000.

If convicted under the Wildlife Act of hindering the director-general of NParks' wildlife management, Neo could be jailed for up to 12 months or fined up to S$10,000, or punished with both.