Gelang Patah Data Centre Residents

The Gelang Patah data centre residents are an informal community group — described in press coverage as a "residents' action committee formed in response to the project" — drawn from four housing estates in the Gelang Patah district of Johor, Malaysia, who organised against the construction of ZDATA Technologies' AI data centre campus on a 15-hectare forested plot less than a kilometre from their homes. Their 7 February 2026 protest outside the construction site, approximately 50 people representing an estimated 1,000 affected residents, was described by multiple regional outlets as the first public protest against a data centre in Malaysia and the first community opposition to an AI data centre project in Southeast Asia. This entry is the corpus's first Southeast Asian data-centre-opposition local group.

Context: Johor's data centre boom and proximity risk

Johor's Iskandar Malaysia economic zone has become one of the fastest-growing data centre corridors in Southeast Asia, driven by proximity to Singapore's connectivity infrastructure and lower land costs. ZDATA Technologies, a Chinese-headquartered AI data centre operator, broke ground on its campus in early 2025 in the Nusajaya 2 Industrial Park area of Gelang Patah. Unlike most Johor data centre projects sited in industrial parks or former plantation land, the ZDATA facility sits less than a kilometre from the nearest homes — the Taman Nusa Bayu and Taman Nusantara Prima estates — with Tropicana Firstwide serving as the local developer partner.

By August 2025, clearing of the 15-hectare forested plot had begun and residents began experiencing construction dust, noise from late-night work, and concerns about water-supply pressure. Local authorities held three town hall sessions in the August–December 2025 period; concerns nonetheless persisted through the end of the year, compounded by a two-week stop-work order issued to ZDATA for poor construction standards.

Organisation and community base

The residents organising against the project have not formed a registered entity. The informal committee draws from four housing estates in the Gelang Patah district: Taman Nusa Bayu and Taman Nusantara Prima (the estates immediately adjacent to the ZDATA site), Leisure Farm estate in Iskandar Puteri, and Kampung Cahaya Baru in Pasir Gudang. Zainoor Annuar, a PhD candidate in disaster management, has emerged as a community spokesperson, representing approximately 400 households in Taman Nusa Bayu. Ulaganathan Krishna is named in the same reporting as a further resident participant.

Actions and demands

The residents' campaign has combined direct public protest, formal written demands to state government, and structured dialogue with local authorities and the developer.

• 7 February 2026 protest. Approximately 50 residents gathered outside the ZDATA construction site, demanding an end to dust pollution and compensation for health impacts and citing concern about the facility's impact on the local water supply. The protest lasted approximately 90 minutes.
• 9 February 2026 memorandum. Residents sent a memorandum to the Johor Menteri Besar's office demanding greater transparency on the state's plans for data centres — widening the community's frame from a single construction-site complaint to state-level data centre policy oversight.
• 12 February 2026 townhall. Kota Iskandar assemblyman Datuk Pandak Ahmad convened a formal session attended by the Iskandar Puteri City Council, the Department of Environment, Tropicana Firstwide, ZDATA Technologies, and approximately 50 residents including the action committee. ZDATA committed to deploying an additional 10,000 square metres of green netting, implementing hydro-seeding to stabilise exposed soil, and reviewing resident requests for compensation covering laundry, medical, and utility costs.

Place in the constellation

This entry is the corpus's first Southeast Asian data-centre-opposition local group. The corpus already carries European entries in this constellation — the Netherlands' Stichting DataTruc Zeewolde and Spain's Tu Nube Seca Mi Río — and Latin American entries — Chile's MOSACAT and Mexico's Voceras de la Madre Tierra. The Gelang Patah case extends the constellation into Southeast Asia and into a distinct political-economy frame: a state-backed, export-oriented data centre expansion in a jurisdiction where planning frameworks and proximity safeguards lag the pace of investment, rather than the European context of energy-grid or water constraints driving regulatory resistance.

The residents' widening from site-specific environmental complaint to state-level data centre policy demand — the 9 February memorandum to the Menteri Besar — connects the entry to the corpus's democratic-oversight dimension: community residents asserting the right to participate in decisions about large-scale AI infrastructure sited near their homes.