Welcome 2013

Welcome to 2013. Beginning of every new year will witness many people having new aspirations, new objectives in life, new scope of works, new responsibilities and the least might be acquiring new clothes, new car, new hairstyle and etc. At least for me is having new scope of work, that is becoming the "driver" for my kid going to school now. It is a long journey considering that we have 6 years of primary education. The year 2013 will be a challenging year for all walk of Malaysian. Everybody is anticipating the 13th General Election by March or later before June. As such, many planning and implementation of works are pretty much undecided or subjected to change. These include the submission of development projects, infrastructure works and even decision to procure. I believe it will be a difficult task to achieve the target of having twice OSC meeting a month. Keeping the town clean and tidy when it comes close to the election time. With the uncertainty in global economic and political scenario now, it is anticipated that submission for new development projects might be slowed down or stagnant until thing is clearer. For MBPJ it will be exciting when it comes to 2nd of January as the organisation, councillors and staff will welcome Datin Paduka Alinah bt Ahmad, the first Woman Mayor in Malaysia to take over the helm from Dato' Haji Mohamad Roslan bin Sakiman. Changes and transformation is eagerly awaiting by all. While former mayor has done an excellent job and loveable by all walk of society of Petaling Jaya, it will definitely be another milestone for PJ to have the service of an experience personnel especially in the segment of corporate, land and property administration and development. For developmental planning, submission for all types of application will have to go through the OSC Online system starting from 1st January 2013. It will excited to watch over the process and readiness of submitting persons to do so. The OSC Unit and other technical agencies are ever ready to receive and to process the application and to teach the consultants. On the same day also, submission of landscape plan applcation will have to be done concurrently with the planning permission submission. This is to avoid the discrepencies used to happen for landscaping purpose after all other plans have been approved or infrastructure has been built. Many others measures to expedite the process and to reduce the red tape is in the midst of discussion now. It is with the hope to help facilitating the developmental process, and to make the businesses to love PJ as a friendly partner in delivery, of course the pretext is all should become a socially anf environmentally responsible corporate. For low carbon green city of Petaling Jaya. It is fascinating and exciting as many programmes are on the pipeline. The market organic waste composting project in Jalan Othman is expected to take off by March. The pilot project on low carbon city focusing on waste sector with KeTTHA is on going since end of December 2012. The possibility of using treated water and effluent from IWK plants for landscaping purpose is under study now. The retrofiting work to turn MBPJ HQ into a green building will be starting with a budget allocation of almost RM 1 million. Hopefully, these will be sustained and remained as one of the top priorities of MBPJ. Wishing everyone a Happy New Year 2013.