LETTER | The Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ) has stated its intention for Petaling Jaya to be a smart, sustainable, resilient, and dynamic city by 2025.
A flow-through of its mission included the words “To execute the agenda towards smart, sustainable, resilient, dynamic through an efficient administration, effective, and a community-caring governance.”
Big words. In the bakery of incoherent platitudes, surely MBPJ takes the cake!
For a council that says it wants to focus on the needs of a developing city that is smart, sustainable, and resilient, by creating a safe, barrier-free city through the maintenance of facilities, services, and infrastructure, one needs to merely look outside its window to a neighbourhood that is lying literally at its doorstep to see imminent dangers that have not been resolved - despite numerous complaints and grievances raised by taxpayers and residents in PJ.
Ratepayers and office-goers moving in and around Padang Timur, Amcorp Mall, and Tama Jaya LRT station all the way down Persiaran Barat to PJ Hilton - supposedly the epicentre of development of the city lovingly called PJ Sentral - bear the semblance of a city ages behind in coherent, safe, public-friendly infrastructure.
From broken streetlamps, damaged poles sticking out, to a lack of safety road signs, the absence of speed reducers, and a lack of zebra crossings or road safety barriers to protect pedestrians in the area, it is now a breeding ground for snatch thefts and accidents.
Numerous grievances have been raised to MBPJ but progress and rectification appear to move at snail's pace, if at all.
Is it left now to residents to take it up and do something about it? Or is the MBPJ actually going to wake up and deliver on their very basic promise of maintenance and safety? Or is managing the surging pigeon population in PJ more important than the wellbeing of pedestrians and residents?
It’s time to buck up, MBPJ, or will these complaints fall on deaf ears, yet again?
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
