KUALA LUMPUR, Apr 20 — Badan Warisan Malaysia (BWM) has urged the authorities including the National Heritage Department to protect SMK Convent Bukit Nanas (CBN) that could be forced to relocate as the historic school’s land lease was not being renewed.
The non-governmental group said the school was massively important to Malaysia’s history and heritage, both in terms of education and the architecture of its buildings.
“Convent Bukit Nanas, like all great schools and colleges in the world, possesses a legacy of fine educational traditions and architectural buildings,” BWM said in a statement today.
Expressing concern over the non-renewal of the lease, BWM urged the authorities to gazette CBN as a national heritage site and ensure its lease would be renewed.
“This recent decision by the Land and Mines Department poses a serious threat to the very existence of this heritage school that is more than 100 years old, in its present form and location,” it said,
The heritage preservation group highlighted that CBN has been at its current location for over a century following its move to its current Bukit Nanas home in 1909.
It further noted that the school’s buildings built by the Public Works Department were designed by two government architects including one who was responsible for the Sulaiman Building on Jalan Sultan Hishamuddin and the Sultan Sulaiman Royal Mosque in Klang.
“It would be a tragic loss to our nation that this fine legacy is carelessly destroyed if that corner of Kuala Lumpur at Bukit Nanas is further developed,” the BWM said.
The BWM is the latest to press the authorities to ensure that CBN would not be relocated.
The school yesterday won leave at the High Court here to challenge the non-renewal of its land lease, which is due to expire on September 6 this year.
The application for a stay pending the disposal of this judicial review will be heard on May 34, 2021.
