Christmas Concert 2009

Local Agenda 21 PJ achieved another milestone when the inaugural Christmas Concert 2009 was commenced on 15th December 2009 at the Auditorium of Civic Centre, PJ. The Concert was organised by MBPJ in collaboration with APAC and CFM to celebrate the festive season. It is a platform for enhancing greater interaction and mutual understanding on culture amongst people from the multi-ethnic society of Malaysia. More than 800 people joined YB Teresa Kok, Senior Exco Member of the Selangor State Government and other dignitaries enjoyed the two hours show. The show began with the singing of National and State Anthem, followed by prayer reciting and speeches as well as opening dance by MBPJ Cultural Troop. Next on stage was the Choir of the Selangor Philharmonic Society followed by popular singers Jaclyn Victor, Juwita Suwito and Patrick Leong whom rendered numerous festive songs. The night reached it peak with marvellous performance from Dr Joanne Yeoh, a respectable international violinist. The Concert was spiced up with lively and humorous cheers from Fahmi, the MC. It was a show one should have not missed it. I am glad to see people from all walk of life and segments of community attended the Concert. The presence of celebrities have definitely brought in people from different aged groups.

The success was attributed to the partnership and participation of various individual and groups. Without them and their persistent, the organising might not have even started. Kudos to Mr Michael Soon, Richard Yeoh, Patrick Leong and MBPJ staffs. While many have working tireless ensuring the show a success, the organising, as usual was not spared without challenges due to inept attitude of some people with reasons best known to themselves. This attitude, however did not deter others to move on. I presume, this is the true spirit of Local Agenda 21 and perhaps the underlying principle of 1Malaysia. The presence of YB Dato Seri Idris Jala, Minister of the Prime Minister Department testified that.

Social interaction in a diverse and multi-ethnic, cultural, religions and even social status society of Malaysia is always a challenge. It is a difficult task to unify people towards a shared value, objectives and vision for our Nation. Towards that, a lot of mutual understanding and awareness have to be created. The least the local authorities should do apart from policies and structural considerations, is to facilitate greater interaction by creating and providing multi platforms for everyone, regardless of their background, I presume.

MBPJ should continue doing so by using all festive season celebration as a platform for enhancing social cohesion. Until then, the vision of PJ as a dynamic and healthy city for ALL remains a distance dream.

Leadership Camp for Children

These are the messages disseminated by young participants of the Leadership Camp. To me, it is a wake up call to us the adult on how the children and youth feel and wanted to be accorded fair treatment in the city planning and development process. It is also a call for greater and mutual collaboration amongst different stakeholders. We, the adult have normally presumed that children and youth are too young the age to make a rational decision for their own, or even to express their opinion. It is us, to decide for them the best. Generally, we have not taken views and opinions of the children seriously. We have always said that children need protection and guidance, and most of the time absolute control. The room for their equal participation is very limited. Hence, it is always between you and me. What my parent want me to do or What I am asked to act for my own good. It proved me wrong after attending the Camp briefly and listened to their thoughts during the closing ceremony. Their views are so constructive, creative, compassionate and make sense. They asked the adult of not doing anything for them without them. They are ready to be involved and consulted as well as implementation.

On 8th December 2009, a total of 35 children aged 14-17 years old attended the Leadership Camp at Selesa Resort, Bukit Tinggi, Pahang. The Camp was organised by MBPJ in collaboration with Community Support Network and Generasi Gemilang and supported by UNICEF. The Camp is an introductory session for the PJ Child Councillors prospects, part of the strategies for an initiative to develop PJ as a child friendly city as provided for under the Chapter 25, Agenda 21 and Convention for the Rights of Child.

I am confident that with this group of children around, the initiative of making PJ a child friendly city is attainable.

Rules of Law

Double standard and justification is separated only with a thin line, depending on how you look at it or from who's perception. While some authorities over zealous on some regulations for a particular area or issues, they tend to accommodate when specific needs arise. For some, this kind of adjustment is considerate and with humanity. However, other school of thought tend to argue that too much discretion power will lead to abuse and perhaps room for corruption. To me, it is a matter of transparency and good governance. Decision making process has to be known to every stakeholders, and from the beginning. Execution of decision has to be communicated with all affected, and do so from the beginning to the end. Any break down on communication and dissemination of information will result in confrontation and disruption to the planning process.

Decision making process is very tedious and not everyone will agree with the decision made. People objecting to the decision might have personal interest or agenda. Even those silent one will start making noise if they come across that the planning might have affected them. Keep in mind that people resist from changes. Informed decision is crucial.

Having said this, rules and regulations as well as the principles and spirit must always be adhered to. For changing circumstances, outdated rules and regulations need to be amended. No exception or exemption should be given or else suspicion will arise. People might have thought that favouritism and cronyism is taking place. Nobody, even the authorities should be spared from the rules. It is applied to everyone unless it is explicitly stated in the rules and agreed upon before the rules were endorsed. For example, if parking is not allowed, then summons should be issued to the offender even those he/she is the staff of local authority. Similarly, if we cannot allow erection of a signboard for displaying message other than for the owner himself, then it is also not right to grant a permit to third party for doing so. That's why it comes to my surprise knowing that a local authority goes against her own rules when a decision was made in flavour of them.

We obviously need to be consistent and lead by example when it comes to law abiding.

Back Lane

This is neither a store room or a house compound. It is a gated back lane in one of the neighbourhood. It is commonly noticed in many neighbourhood in PJ. For security reason, people resolve to barricade for control access. While it is understood the fear feeling of people, it is also a dangerous trend for safety consideration. It might become fire haphazard. Now, the smart mobile hawkers are using it for storage purpose. The chairs, containers, tables and even fridge are stored there. Not only it is for convenience purpose, but rather to me also for safe deposit. What a smart usage.

The question is should back lane be converted for better use? Previously, back lanes are provided as fire break and for urban services. However, with the introduction of services provision from the front of building and the possibility of maintaining 15 feet building setback without having the back lane, one will wonder why should we keep the existing back lanes.

I presume we can turn the back lanes onto a gated open space for the use of immediate neighbours. With at least 300 feet in length, it must be a good cycling track for children. With kitchens around the corner, it must be a good interaction place for housewife to chit chat on family matters or even cooking recipes. Perhaps the man can also spend time there after a day work. While we are talking about the losing of green space, perhaps converting the back lanes as green space will help to preserve the greenery. Having said this, the bottom line for local authorities should be having a maintenance-less and efficient-use of public space, hence saving on expenditure for road resurfacing, after all the work was not done very often.

Slow Food

Have you heard about slow food? To simplify, the opposite of fast food. It is a movement started to preserve traditional food from the threat of fast food which has revolutionised our life style, eating habit and even work culture. Fast food is unstoppable especially for the yuppies and working class with time is an essence for them. However, there are people worried about losing our traditional recipe on food making, the taste and even the memory of good old days. It is also a concern of standardization in food preparation, ingredients and monotonous selection of food will jeopardize our continue pursuing for good and variety of food. Using of same kind of ingredients will also discard the use of other types of vegetation, hence the degradation of biodiversity.

In Malaysia, slow food promotion is not targeting on opposing the fast food, rather than encouraging public to enjoy eating healthily and sustainably. It relates to organic farming as well. By encouraging people to cook with less oil, salt, sugar, vinegar and even to consume sufficiently for the need rather than want. People are also taught about planting for their own consumption by recycling the resources such as composting our household waste and using the seeds again.

The above were the theme for the 3rd Organic Day held on 5Th December 2009. The Organic Day was organised by MBPJ, CETDEM and Section 19 Residents Association to promote organic produce and sustainable urban lifestyle. It is a Local Agenda 21 capacity building program to raise public awareness for sustainable development. The event saw a big turnout and interested the most must be the demonstration on traditional way of making chee cheong fun. It certainly brought back the feel good old days.

Urban Regeneration: A Must

City is equivalent to our body. The inter-dependence of various land uses is similar to the organs in our body. The functioning of our body depends on how organs work and function effectively. A person needs to undergo a heart bypass for removing the blockage or else he is in danger of heart attack. Similarly, a city will remain stand still or even deprecated if incompatibility of land uses and urban sprawl happened. Aging cities just like human beings need revitalization or commonly known as overhaul or major service or else the dilapidated situation will discourage new investment and pushing away the aboriginal residents. A mature society in most of the developed city is also in need of new facilities to cater for the emerging needs of the dwellers. For instance, universal design or barrier free infrastructure for the senior citizens and people with disabilities becomes an essential part of the city. Advancing of technologies has also forced the city managers to look into equipping the management with new tools. For example, using GPS gestures to pin point exact location of facilities required urgent maintenance or even to monitor the complaints so that service quality is enhanced. Globalization has also demanded the city to reshape for capturing new business opportunities. Cities around the globe are competing for scarce resources and cities offering the best deal conducive for businesses, living and of course, social and economic returns will get better attention. Even the new Y and X generation with higher expectation and aspiration, of course more expose to the global work is asking regeneration of the city, that is closer to their taste and heart. It is insufficient of providing green space in the physical space that can fulfill their needs and wants, but rather the cyber space as well. All these are pushing city to pursue urban regeneration or revitalization or renewal or even redevelopment, partly or in total.

Planning is a dynamic process; hence, it is inevitable and unstoppable for a city to experience regeneration. Having said this, to grab the positive and greater impacts of the opportunities arise, a planned, participatory and inclusive process of development is required. All stakeholders have to be involved for making the old city, especially the inner part to function again, effectively and efficiently. For greater impact, stakeholders’ constructive involvement is required, and for that to happen their participation should be facilitated, conveniently, thoroughly and with ease.

Doing so, we need leadership and wills from all levels of governance, a shared vision and sense of belongings by all, appropriate mechanism, competent capacity, facilitating legislation, inculcation of trust as well as confident and provision of incentives are pre-requisite. Top of the list, to me is the stakeholders’ participation. And stakeholders, we are talking about those having a stake there for longer time. Developers, those who will bring in investment, develop and continually improving the area, rather than those having the intention of selling off everything without even want to claim their stakes should also be consulted. Market force is essential for urban regeneration, but it is not the only thing for consideration.

Urban regeneration is not a choice, but unavoidable. The readiness and willingness will determine how far and fast a city can go, in the world map instead of the regional or local level. Loving your city is also meant act responsibly and letting your city growth healthily and that include revitalization.

Effective Communication

I was asked by a colleague to help translating a notice from Malay Language to Chinese recently. The notice is meant to invite hawkers of a night market to attend a briefing and also balloting for the restructuring of the market. While Malay language is used for official function and corresponding, the officers agreed that for effective communication, all means of communications should be explored. These include sending sms informing the meeting, peer interaction, personal touch, e-mailing and private chat apart from the letters.

For effective information dissemination, the process is very critical. While specific target groups have to be identified, the means is equally important. For example, if the group does not care much about the subject matter, they will not attend to the matter. If the subject matter is related to their own interest, then by all mean they will find a way to get attention despite of getting notice in languages they are not familiar with.

In the case of restructuring the night market, I believe all of them will try to make themselves presence since most of them will be affected. Their livelihood is at stake as the location of their stall will determine whether they can make better business or not. Hence, translating the notice into another language should be seen as an added services by MBPJ. It shows the Council is engaging people friendly and people-centric approach. This approach is workable if there are interests attached to that or else nobody will bother much.

Having said this, I think exploring multiple approaches and means of communication is the way forward for effective public communication even though with or without self interest.