I only found out about it today when I attended a forum at the Syuen Hotel in Ipoh organised by the folks at "Ipoh City Watch' which is an NGO. The law has been made, where soon your normal garbage collection will be under the Ministry,
Ong Ka Chuan runs, where the Government has allocated RM1 Billion to set up a solid waste management department. Which means, your local council will be paying your bills for garbage collection to the Federal Government. The annual assessment fees you diligently pay to city hall will be used to pay the bills. With this City Hall will have less money to squander, under that pretext I forsee the raising of assessment fees in the near future, as city hall will claim they have less funds and need to screw the ratepayers more.
Why do you think they did it? As an example you urbanites, who voted for a DAP candidate with maybe a population of 30,000 or more in an electoral constituency will subsidise, a rural contituency which has a population of 10,000 maybe like Padang Rengas, which is rabidly anti DAP. See the irony. Or better still take the administrative capital of Malaysia, the constituency of Tengku Adnan,
who said 80% of bloggers are unemployed women; that all bloggers cheat, Putrajaya, where 10,000 highly paid civil servants living in luxury quarters inhabit. They by themselves cannot pay for their solid waste management, maybe Theresa Kok's constiuency will have to subsidise the very people who bureaucratically screw them frequently. You get my drift. Also it is the road to mega big bucks. Expect more rent seeking. I heard that Alam Flora has already bagged the contract for the southern states of the Peninsula. There is some loophole in the law where the Pakatan led states , can reject this blatant unethical deal. Before rejecting that, make sure legal expertise is sought.
On a further note this forum was attended by a Dr Goh (former councillor-expert on city coucils) who has a column in the Sun paper, Lawyer Derek Fernandez and Citizen Nades. This forum was planned about a month ago. Alot of invitations were sent out inviting our recently elected State Assemblymen. None of them showed up, come on guys, this is a forum about meeting the rakyat and making city council better. The PKR guy
Chan Ming Kai who won the Simpang Pulai constituency deserves a hard kick up his arse from my boot, because I voted for that clown and he too, did not turn up either. My hats off to YB Kulasegaran, he was at the forum from the beginning to the end.
They discussed Penang's Councillors, the change that DAP was calmouring for was not seen, the way they selected their councillors in Penang. What change? What happened to the transparency that was yelled about by Guan Eng and company before the elections? Well, hopefully the political forces in Perak will wake up to the fact that many in Penang are unhappy and not follow those in Penang. I am also hoping that YB Kulasegaran will send the message to his counter parts in the Pakatan Rakyayt.
Why do every Tom, Dick and Harry want to be a councillor? The simple answer is mega big bucks! Councillors earn a pathetic RM500-RM1000 a month. Well, I will explain away what Citizen Nades told us in the forum. For example, a Councillor , has easy access to hawker licenses. Being the crooked Councillor, he is, he acquires maybe about 30 hawker licenses, each maybe costing RM30. He sets up say, 'Persatuan Peniaga Kecil', he rents out the licenses for say RM300 each per month, he makes easy money of RM9,000 per month. That is only the beginning.
It is very difficult to get good councillors. Councillors should be from the area they reside in. Not like say someone residing in Klang, being a councillor for PJ. Councillors should be selected based on competence, merit, integrity, who treat people equally and being non discriminatory. They should be accountable, transparent and be able to be consulted.
Council meetings should be held after working hours where the interests of the common people are taken care of. All common people should be able to attend the meetings. Attire of people attending the meetings should not become an issue, one does not expect fish mongers and hawkers to come in suits when their interests are being debated upon.
Also there was another incident which nearly happened in Subang Jaya, as related by Citizen Nades, where apparently some cronies of the 'Doktor Gigi' formed a Pest Control Company. There are around 20,000 business premises in Subang Jaya alone. For the renewal of the 20,000 business licenses they must show that their premises were free of pests. The only authority that would enable them to renew their licenses were certifications from the "Crony Pest Control Company". The service charged was RM80 per certificate. It would have made them a cool RM1.6 million. The plan fell apart, as they did not think it through. The Pesticide Licensing Board had not issued them a license to store pesticides. Well, there are many more.
The antics of Local Councils are interesting. Stayed tuned to Citizen Nades.
