Saturday, January 17, 2009

Food For Thought - by Mr. Lee Lih Shyan, MBPJ


Catch 22@PJ: Gated Storage Space

Gated storage space? It happened in my own neighbourhood. A gate was put up at the entrance of the back lane as a deterrent to the deteriorating safety situation in SS25 but turn out to be the storage for a rojak seller. The hawker store his tables and chairs, umbrella, bins and even a refrigerator there for safe keeping. Is this considered an abuse of usage for public space or an intelligent way for optimising the resources? While the gate was put up to prevent stringers to loiter in the neighbourhood, it is not meant for keeping private goods in the public area. We are in the Catch 22 situation now that it is a common scene in PJ seeing many residents and premise owners encroaches onto the public space. It is common to see the piling of construction material on the road shoulders, the placing of gas cylinders, rubbish bin and stalls on top of the drain, the pre-booking of parking lot with the tyres, signboard and bins on the road.
What should we do? Perhaps to educate people that encroachment onto public space is equivalent to raping the green area and vandalising the public properties, and it is a punishable offence. Shame based approach could be applied so that people's conscious is clear. Until this concept is implanted into everyone mentality and value, these kind of "offences" will continue and having a tidy and beautiful city scape may not be possible in the near future.

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