GEORGE TOWN, Aug 27 — Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Law and Institutional Reform) M. Kulasegaran has suggested that the unused tunnels under the heritage High Court building in Penang be turned into a tourism product.
He said there were also tunnels under the High Court building in Ipoh that were no longer in use.
“These tunnels were used to bring the accused straight into court, but now they were no longer in use,” he said in his speech at the project handover of the restoration of the Penang High Court building here.
He said the tunnels could be put to good use, such as for tourism.
“These can be turned into tourism products for visitors and this can create more jobs,” he said.
The 123-year-old High Court in Penang underwent a massive restoration and upgrading project at the cost of RM18.93 million.
The project started on December 1, 2021 and was fully completed on July 13 this year.
The High Court building was one of the main landmarks that led to the inscription of George Town as a Unesco World Heritage Site.
The building, built in 1901 and opened in 1905, was also gazetted as a national heritage under the National Heritage Act 2005.
Kulasegaran said the high court will be fully open for use by November this year.
With the reopening of the main high court building, he said there will be more courtrooms available.
“When I visited this court a month ago, Air Putih assemblyman Lim Guan Eng suggested that the premises being rental for use by the court currently should be continued so that we have more courtrooms for use in Penang,” he said.
He said it is important to have more courtrooms for more sittings and proceedings to be held.
“We need to speed up the hearing of criminal cases, as I believe that justice delayed is justice denied,” he said.
He said he has discussed with the chief registrar to look into the matter.
“It is not fair for cases to be delayed, so I have discussed with the chief registrar that maybe we can increase the number of judges to hear more cases here,” he said.
