THE Department of National Heritage has forwarded a list of 33 items to the Penang government with the intention of gazetting the buildings and sites under the National Heritage Act.
Penang State Heritage commissioner Rosli Nor said the state as well as the building owners must give their approval before the items could be gazetted.
“Our policy is to list the items as state heritage first under our state’s own enactment before they are upgraded. If anything happens, the state will have a strong say,” said Rosli, a conservation architect who was appointed as the Penang State Heritage commissioner on Sept 1.
He said the Persatuan Wadda Gurdwara Sahib in Jalan Gurdwara in George Town and the Guar Kepah neolithic archaeological site in Bukit Mertajam are among the 33 items proposed.
The gurdwara, which is 121 years old, is now undergoing rehabilitation works. It is considered a Category One heritage building under the George Town Special Area Plan and is also one of the oldest gurdwaras, if not the oldest, in Malaysia.
For Guar Kepah archaeological site, the most famous finding there was, of course, the ‘Penang Woman’. It is a full skeleton of a person who is believed to be a woman during excavations undertaken by the USM’s Centre for Global Archaeology, headed by Prof Mokhtar Saidin in 2017.
The ‘Penang Woman’, believed to be over 5,000 years old, has been carefully conserved in USM while a replica of it has been put on display at the site which has been conserved as an archaeological gallery.
Some of the skeletons excavated by colonial archaeologists from 1851 to 1934 at the Guar Kepah site were reported to have been placed in the National Natuurhistorisch Museum, Leiden, the Netherlands.
Penang, Rosli said, has several buildings and sites like Fort Cornwallis, Khoo Kongsi, Goddess of Mercy Temple (Kuan Yin Temple), Masjid Kapitan Keling, Masjid Melayu Lebuh Acheh and St George’s Church already gazetted under the National Heritage Act.
He said building owners still have the right to sell their property after they have given permission for their buildings to be listed as national heritage.
They, however, have to follow conservation guidelines for any extension or development to the property.
Rosli said his main task in Penang is to establish a Penang State Heritage Register and to prepare the conservation management plan and preservation guidelines for all properties inscribed as Penang state heritage.
“My job is to cover the entire state of Penang to look for new items that are worthy of conservation and protection and to recognise them as the heritage of the state.
“The Penang Heritage Enactment covers a big spectrum from the built or tangible cultural heritage to natural heritage as well as intangible cultural heritage’
“It is not necessary about monumental buildings or beautiful buildings, but also wooden houses that serve a very important story for Penang as well as for Malaysia.
“For instance, the world-famous Penang street food such as char koay teow and nasi kandar deserve to be protected and preserved as part of our hawker culture and as intangible cultural heritage,” he said.
According to Rosli, others items like traditional Malay kampung, Chinese new village, fishing villages and Penang Hokkien culture can also be considered for listing on the heritage list.
Rosli, who hails from Kuala Lumpur but has spent 25 years working in Melaka, has a wealth of experience.
He was also a member of the George Town and Melaka heritage application team and served as the general manager of the Melaka World Heritage Office.
He had also previously worked with a private firm (in architectural field) in Kuala Lumpur, Public Works Department, Melaka Museums Corporation (Perzim), Melaka Historic City Council (MBMB), Unit Warisan (Heritage Unit) at the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage and Limkokwing University of Creative Technology.
Rosli said the state authorities would appoint at least five experts from various disciplines, like expert in built heritage, intangible heritage, and cultural heritage to sit on the Penang Heritage Council.
These experts, he said, would lead working committees and discuss what items to be recognised as Penang state heritage. He and his staff members will then conduct research and do other groundwork.
The council will be chaired by Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow, who will appoint three of his state executive councillors to be among the members.
Story by K.H. Ong
Pix by Muhamad Amir Irsyad Omar