A number of residents, myself included have been frustrated by the lack of enforcement (both police and local council actually). The problem we have is having only two hundred plus enforcement officers to cover:
  1. Traffic
  2. Hygiene
  3. Places of entertainment
  4. Business license
  5. Illegal/Ah long ads
  6. Building regulation
  7. Littering and illegal dumping of rubbish
  8. Use of public space
  9. Pets - including requiring dog owners to scoop after their dog
  10. etc
A list of MPSJ bylaws can be found on MPSJ's website.

The amount of enforcement officers in comparison to a population of nearly 1mil is certainly not good.

As a comparison, we have about 1/5 of Singapore's population. We also have about 1/3 of their land size. They have about 35,000 strong police force. We don't even come close to 1/5 of that, when combining our Police force in MPSJ areas + MPSJ enforcement.


In reply to the residents,

1. I'm all for increasing enforcement - traffic, gambling, littering, dirty restaurants, etc. I've been very consistent on this in council meetings whenever enforcement is discussed

2. This increase can be done either by
a) increasing our staff
b) outsourcing

3. Increasing govt staff is not easy. We need approval from state govt and JPA. While most of us (me included) always feel that enforcement staff will automatically earn their keep by the amount of summons they issue, this is not really the case. Most summons go unpaid, as people don't fear it. MPSJ is dragging people to court, but as you can imagine, there's only a limited amount of people that we can prosecute per month, and somehow, despite doing this, it has not struck fear.

4. Since implementing the yellow tag for parking offences in Taipan, the payment rate for summons has gone up - 64% the last i heard. This is positive in helping the case of increasing enforcement.

5. As for outsourcing enforcement, a council meeting has recently directed the legal dept to study and present a paper on this matter by February.

6. Why can't we just go ahead? Well, because we are not sure what legal implications there might be, and instead of rushing into things, which may land us in court, cost us lots of legal fees and embarrassment, and may nullify all those summons issued. So, please give it some time.

7. Not all councillors are for increasing enforcement. In fact some are against it. Some prefer "education" (please lah, i think everyone knows they are committing wrong, and are just not afraid of getting caught). Others fear political backlash from strict enforcement.

So, this is not an easy battle. I am however determined to see it through.