Kuala Lumpur sinkhole tragedy a wake-up call, but who will take responsibility?

Search teams have been working round the clock in Malaysia’s capital Kuala Lumpur over the past week, in a scramble to locate an Indian tourist who fell down an eight-metre-deep sinkhole in a freak accident in the heart of the city.

CCTV footage of the area in the busy thoroughfare of Masjid India showed how 48-year-old Vijaya Lakshmi Gali suddenly disappeared on August 23, when the ground collapsed under her feet as she walked just metres behind her family.

The victim and her family were on the last day of a two-month tour of Malaysia, scheduled to fly home to India’s Andhra Pradesh state the next day.

The incident has triggered an outpouring of fear, anger and disbelief among many Malaysians, who have questioned how it could have happened and whether it could have been prevented.

Theories abound about how parts of the city were built on a bedrock of limestone, which a widely cited 2017 study by a local university found to be potentially unstable. The study by Universiti Teknologi Mara also found that the city’s rapid expansion over the past century had caused a dramatic increase in the risk of sinkholes occurring.

The government said on Wednesday that it would carry out an “integrity audit” of the city’s sewerage system in an attempt to determine the root cause of the sinkhole.

This followed earlier news reports that Kuala Lumpur City Hall had on Monday ordered an immediate suspension of all development work, and after a second sinkhole appeared on Wednesday just 50 metres from the site where Vijaya Lakshmi went missing.

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Indian tourist vanishes after being swallowed by 8-metre sinkhole in Kuala Lumpur

Kuala Lumpur Mayor Maimunah Mohd Sharif dismissed the reports, telling reporters on Wednesday that the city hall was