The renting of public bays to hawkers as seen here in Bukit Damansara, Kuala Lumpur, reduces parking spaces for the community. — TRACY TOH/The Star
AS Klang Valley folk get ready to ring in another year, a familiar disquiet lingers.
Behind the veneer of bustling cities and vibrant communities, stakeholders continue to be frustrated by clogged drains, overflowing rubbish bins and unlawful dumping, illegal and double parking.
Our local councils, entrusted with maintaining our towns and cities, must answer the question of whether 2024 will be yet another year they spend treading water in a sea of unsolved grievances.
Annually, we go through the tiring process of demanding progress and accountability from the local government.
Every year, we dive into the murky waters of enforcement and transparency issues to demand the clean governance we as urban residents deserve.
This year, just as the years before it, the spotlight fell on a tangled mess of parking woes and vanishing green spaces.
Public parking bays, meant to serve the community, have been “rented” out to food traders like coveted market stall lots.
As one reader lamented to StarMetro in November, the lack of parking spaces is exacerbated by the local councils’ lack of coherent policies on parking spots taken up by food traders, at stratified residential buildings and many other areas in the Klang Valley.
While the satay and crispy fritters may appeal to these hawkers’ customers, residents and stakeholders are the ones who have to live with the inconvenience of having their roads congested, losing parking bays and even dealing with sanitation issues.
Where do we as residents fit in this warped equation?
This brazen disregard for regulations by the councils, that are ironically supposed to be enforcing them, leads to chaos, transforming two-lane roads into choked, single-lane arteries.
A similar problem is happening at the Astaka Sports Complex in Petaling Jaya.
There are designated parking bays but when these are fully occupied especially during major events, motorists resort to parking their cars all along the field, disrupting the traffic flow and making it difficult for drivers and pedestrians going in and out of the area.
While Petaling Jaya City Council (MPBJ) enforcement officers can be seen issuing compounds on errant vehicle owners who don’t pay for parking or park illegally, the issue persists because of motorists’ disregard for rules.
As for the recurring problems of illegal dumping, some local councils have put up signboards and conduct periodic monitoring while others have installed closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras.
The latter has proven more effective in deterring litterbugs and preventing recurrences.
In November 2021, the Sepang Municipal Council issued 72 compounds under Rubbish Collection and Disposal By-law (MPS) 2007, made possible because of the CCTV cameras that it had installed.
This also enabled the council to monitor rubbish collection by Selangor’s sanitation contractor KDEB Waste Management Sdn Bhd.
Meanwhile, Klang Valley is gasping for breath, struggling against the relentless advance of concrete and asphalt as its green lungs shrink with each new development.
Earlier this month, StarMetro reported about a development project on a precarious slope in Bukit Antarabangsa.
Lot 126846 (formerly Lot 850) at the corner of Jalan Wangsa 1 and the Middle Ring Road 2 has become a site of contention for residents as they claim there is a stream that cuts through the area.
When the questionable planning permission shown by the developer was referred to, Ampang Jaya Municipal Council (MPAJ) did not reply on the matter.
The local council’s inaction is galling, especially given the residents’ anxiety that more landslides may occur in the area.
Let us not only usher in the new year, but also demand a new era of urban council accountability.
Klang Valley must be a place where green spaces flourish, not vanish, and where people can thrive.
