Public Consultation

Many attended the inaugural dialogue session between YB Ronnie Liu, Selangor State Exco for Local Government and Residents last Sunday at the D'Kelana Hall, Petaling Jaya. This is part of the roadshow program hosted by the State Government to gather information from the residents about the performance of local authorities. It was done as many questions raised during the last State Assembly Meeting were targeted at the performance of local authorities.

The session ran wild a bit when many people wanted to share their concerns. Many touched on the security, shoddy infrastructure works, traffic congestion, illegal use of residential buildings, complaints management system, lack of responses, ineffective of communication, malpractice, planning approval for development projects and other administration problems. These problems are very much local centric and is resolvable. Many time, the problems were accumulated over some time due to inaction and lack of communication. It is believed with some form of urgency, pro activeness and monitoring, many of the problems can be solved. All in all, meet them in person as fast as possible instead of getting the problems out of hand. We must remember the parable of broken window that you have to fix a problem faster than it can further deteriorate or else it will become unsolvable. Similarly, an urban services minor problem will become major if not attended to. For example, a pot hole due to water leaking will be getting bigger if no action is taken.

During the session also saw the name calling. To me, this is uncalled for. Consultation is a forum for various stakeholders come together to brainstorm and reach consensus on issues. It is not a platform to discredit someone openly. We should not go into personal attacking. We should be polite and considerate in bringing out concerns although it might be with high dissatisfaction tune. Confronting and making others angry will definitely not helping us to find an amicable solution. It will aggravate the situation further. Perhaps we must have organised the course on alternative community disputes resolution too.

Public participation is also about right content and context. Some argued about short notice attending the forum and some talked about the timing. Perhaps it is also good to look into appropriateness of time, venue, arrangement and preparation for the dialogue.

Despite the many complaints, it is a good start leading to participatory planning and good local governance.

Kota Damansara Community Forest

Kota Damansara Community Forest is finally to stay after many rumours of earmarking for development. The Chief Minister of Selangor announced that the forest, home to many wildlife and 100 years old flora and fauna will be gazetted within 3 months. This announcement brought joys and tears to many residents and friends attended the Earth Day Carnival organised by Friends of Kota Damansara in collaboration with MBPJ last Sunday. Friends and Malaysian Nature Society deserve for their persistent in conserving the forest. It is never an easy task for collaborating with many NGOs and CBOs in making the forest the home for everyone. We saw the Girls Guild and Scout use the forest for training and leisure activities, then we saw anglers fishing there, we saw residents brought their families there for a walk. Hopefully in near future we will see the aboriginal people to greet us into the deeper side of the forest.

With land status confirmed now, it is time to move forward to manage the forest. It is also a challenge from the Chief Minister to request the Friends to look into a workable and collaborative management model for the forest. The community needs to convince others that community partnership and participation can manage and optimise the potential of our heritage instead of letting development to take place. To me, it is our commitment to the future generation.

Perhaps, this must be the greatest gift for Petaling Jaya and Kota Damansara residents in celebrating 2009 Earth Day.

Earth Day

I decided to write about Earth Day after 22.4.2009 as I wanted to assess the celebration held in conjunction with the Day. To my surprise there were events warranted for mentioning.

I attended a meeting hosted by Sepang Municipal Council to discuss Local Agenda 21 activities for Cyberjaya City. Malaysian Institute of Planners was invited to brief the meeting for the proposed tree planting campaign to offset the carbon footprint and representative from Alam Flora, being the waste management company was asked to enlighten the meeting on 3R concept. I commended the Council for having a meeting during the Day, although it might be coincident.

On the same afternoon, I attended the Earth Day Carnival Hi Tea Party hosted by Justlife at the Ikano Power Centre. The Party was so lively and innovative in which I have the opportunity to experience many things first time in my life or if not have been done long long time ago. We were served organic finger food with plate made from the leaf, symbolising the gesture back to nature and basic. We were entertained by popular DJ and singer with songs related to environment. We met environmental proponents from different fields such as organic farmers, Lohas believers, environmentalists, green entrepreneurs and others. I will say well done Justlife.

While celebrating Earth Day on 22.4 each year for public awareness raising is commendable, making it happens everyday is more meaningful. Until and unless people practice sustainable living and lifestyle, grandness of an event for the particular day is meaningless, be it Earth Hour, Earth Day, Water Day, World Environmental Day etc. Perhaps it is good to have everyday named after an environmental programme so that we have to do something good everyday.

Happy Earth Day. Well, it is not too late to start.

Waste

I was informed by Mr David Zon, operator of a waste management company last week that there are plenty of waste out there waiting to be converted to raw material instead of disposed the waste at the landfill. I agreed with him. We usually treat waste as something to throw away and will normally spend little time to think about using the so called waste for something useful. The most many people used to do is sending the waste to recycled centres. Similarly, the factories will engage waste contractors to dispose their waste and very few are concerned about the treatment of waste into some useful things. In order to correct this perception, perhaps more products using the waste as raw material should be highlighted and be given proper acknowledgement. The concept of waste is wealth should be supported by as many visible products as possible.

The Waste Converter should also be provided with incentives such as market penetration for them to make it as a viable business venture. Many converters whom have the passion of being environmental friendly cannot continue to do so simply because of lacking market and promotion skill. Perhaps it is time for environmentalists to get help to be green entrepreneurs. The setting up of Ministry of Energy, Green Technology and Water will help, i believe.

Social Integration

Social integration is easy to say been done. The Prime Minister of Malaysia advocate 1Malaysia concept by calling everyone to be united and working together for a common goal. The pre-requisite for this to realise is getting Malaysian from different ethnic, religions, socio-cultural background, social and education status to mingle with each others, to understand each others, to work, play and live together. Opportunities must be there to allow these from happening. We must create forum and platform for people with different walks to meet, chit-chat and understand each others first before getting them to discuss common issues and solutions.

Thereby, using the festive season celebration we have is considering the best platform we have. When Malay is celebrating the Raya Open House, others can make themselves be presence, similarly others can patronise our friends during the Chinese New Year, Thaipusam, Deepavali, Christmas and other celebration. It is the best time for creating mutual understanding and bargaining for privileges as all are having festive and relax mood.

Social integration will become a lip service if we do not act but mere talking. Everyone is obliged of initiating a first move towards social integration. For example, try to understand others' celebration, respect others for their right in celebrating their festival and to participate, if invited. While this might not happen over night as more education efforts need to be done to erase any doubt, if any. I am optimistic now after witnessing what happened last Sunday night.
I saw people with different ethnic and religion background attending the Easter Celebration Concert. The attendees enjoyed the songs rendered by popular artists such as Jacelyn Victor, Suwito and Patrick Leong.

I personally hope that concerts or events with this magnitude and public presence will continue. Although a small step, but it is definitely a right step towards greater social integration.

Catch 22@PJ: Effective Marketing and Sensitivity

Nowadays, raising public awareness is a difficult task as people are distracting by many other means of publicity and promotion. In order to get attention from general public for a particular cause is a pre-requisite for public awareness raising. It is no point of running a public awareness campaign if we are unable to attract the interest of them first. Many public campaigns failed due to the dullness of the marketing strategies. While developing an innovative publicity strategy is a must, some time the content of the visual aids can cause some disturbance. For example, we might advocate some value by putting a visual that cause uneasiness to some quarters, and this might attract critics although it is for a good intention.

In raising public awareness on challenges facing the people with disabilities, numerous attractive slogans and visual aids have been used to attract the public attention. While the impact was great, the negative responses from some quarters were equally big. For example, placing the notice board with the phrase of "Since you are occupying my car park lot, please bring along my disabilities with you" at the dedicated car park lot for disabled people raised some objections whom saying that it is tantamount to cursing people. Another incidence of getting able guests to sit on the wheelchair was criticised too for being disrespectful to the guests. It is understood that while some people are sensitive due to superlative believe, the people with disabilities themselves felt nothing wrong about this.

We are in the Catch 22 situation now. While it is important to get message across, careful considerations on sensitivity has to be observed as well. We must accept that various stakeholders have different value and believe, and hence accommodating to as many of them is crucial or else public awareness campaign can be failed miserably. Having said this, if a visual aid is fundamentally needed, then it is the duty of project proponents to educate and to convince the objectors on the necessity of having such. Here, consultation is important.

New Business

I attended a meeting last week and met with a person with the designation of manager for new business. I was wondering what this post entailed and managed to talk to him on his portfolio. He mentioned that any businesses in relation to sustainable development or technology advancement with different appearance from the existing business model is considered new business. For example, application of technologies or methods in converting the waste into wealth is a business, a BIG business. While many businesses now are getting more competitive as many newcomers are jumping into the bandwagon, the new business with blue ocean concept might be worth looking at, especially during the economic crisis now.

Businesses in making our Earth to survive and our cities are greener and cleaner, in improving the efficiency of services delivery, in prolonging humans life and in better health are some of the examples. People ask for speed as the world is more competitive now; People require better health condition as they lifespan is longer now; People demand quality living environment as rubbish causes a lot of health haphazard.

For new business to take off and sustain, obviously, we need to have new people with new thinking, some time bold one.