KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 27 – To Selangor Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Amirudin Shari, the RM3 billion Canal City project would not have prevented the deadly flash floods in Malaysia’s most developed state even if it had been completed today as suggested by Barisan Nasional’s Datuk Seri Najib Razak.

The PKR leader said the recent floods in Selangor was caused by an extraordinary amount of rainfall that exceeded the capacity of water catchments.

He stressed that future flood mitigation projects need to be able to collect up to 300-400mm of water at any given time.

"As the Agong said when he went to Sri Muda, he wanted the state and federal governments to sit down and find a new plan to prevent this sort of floods from happening again.

"Is Canal City the answer? We must see the amount of water it can take. If it can’t hold up to 300-400mm of water, we can call it Canal City or Tower City, it won’t solve the issue,” he told a press conference on Facebook this afternoon.

He stressed that the issue to be addressed is how to ensure that water catchments are able to contain more than 100mm of water at any given time.

He added that his state Pakatan Harapan (PH) government has proposed several "billion dollar projects” to the federal government for consideration in the 12th Malaysia Plan.

Amirudin was responding to former prime minister Najib’s remarks last week that the BN’s 2007 flood mitigation project, called Canal City, would have saved Selangor from the floods if it had not been cancelled when the PH coalition took federal power in Election 2018.