Monday February 4, 2008
Discontent over new road signs in Taman Seputeh
By BAVANI M
GET your priorities right! This is what the residents of Taman Seputeh Kuala Lumpur had to say to the Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) when they woke up one morning recently and saw the brand new signboards in their neighbourhood.
The road signs, with the name of the roads in Bahasa Malaysia, also carried the Jawi alphabets.
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A waste of money: One of the road signs with the Jawi translation. |
The residents said the signs were totally unnecessary, as the previous sign boards were only replaced last year and were still quite new.
“It is a total waste of money,” said Taman Seputeh Residents Association chairman G. Simon.
“Why change it in the first place. They did not only change the signs, but the poles as well. It is such a waste of funds,” he added.
Resident Y. W. Yeoh said that residents of Taman Seputeh Kuala Lumpur have been requesting for a proper walkway for their neighbourhood for years but instead got this.
“What we need is walkways, not road signs. In any case what’s the rationale for using the Jawi translation?
“Because of the Jawi signages, the letterings are smaller and makes it difficult to read, especially at night,” said Yeoh.
Resident K.H Lim said he could not understand the need for using Jawi.
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Simon: ‘They did not only change the signs, but the poles as well’ |
“If the reason was because it would benefit Arab tourists – my question is why use Jawi and not Arabic,” he asked.
“And just how many Arab tourists are visiting residential areas in the first place. I can understand it if they did this at tourists hubs,” said Lim.
Yeoh said that if there was a need to use other languages apart from Bahasa Malaysia, then it would make better sense to use Mandarin or Tamil.
Lim also added that the new signs were confusing as the road names, which were numbered before now carry the numbers in brackets.
“For instance, Jalan Batu Laut 1 is now Jalan Batu Laut (1). This is very confusing and unnecessary,” he said.
Seputeh MP Teresa Kok who visited the site to check out the new signs was equally puzzled.
“It’s a waste to spend money like this,” Kok said, adding that the directive to change the road names came from DBKL.
“Apparently this was also done in Bandar Tun Razak. It’s a Malay community there so it’s not really an issue but to do this in Taman Seputeh, where most of the residents are Chinese, is certainly a waste of money,” she said.
When contacted, a City Hall spokesman said that the move to have signboards in Jawi words in main areas in Kuala Lumpur was to encourage Middle Eastern tourists in the city. It was also in line with the concept of Islam Hadari adopted by the government.
Source:
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