IT has been two years and three months since Pakatan Rakyat took charge of Selangor in March 2008 and the question often asked is whether they are doing a better job than their predecessor?

For the ordinary people, what matters most is whether they are getting better service from the local governments for garbage collection, cleaning of drains and proper maintenance of public facilities such as community halls, playgrounds and fields.

But more than that, many are keen to see a transformation at the local councils which had been ridden with allegations of corruption that had led to wastage of public funds through wrong planning and decisions.

Talking about effective services, five local authorities in Selangor have received the four-star rating from the Housing and Local Government Ministry.

Petaling Jaya City Council, Subang Jaya Municipal Council, Shah Alam Municipal Council, Klang Municipal Council and recently Kajang had join ed the list of the four-star councils.

They are only among a total of 11 in the country to have achieved the standard. They have been adjudged for their overall performance, including in terms of services offered.

Over the last two years, it is apparent that the financial standing of the local councils had become much stronger.

This can be attributed to good governance and transparency by the various local councils.

To cite an example, the Klang Municipal Council was embroiled in a massive financial turmoil, running huge debts amounting to RM40mil.

The council even faced difficulty paying the monthly wages of their staff. The good news is that things have changed for the better and the council has almost recovered and heading towards turning their red account into black.

Kudos also to the Petaling Jaya City Council which had increased its reserves from RM80mil to RM191mil in just two years. This is achieved through careful spending of public funds.

As a result of this development, assessment rates for high-rise properties in Petaling Jaya had been brought down to the level of landed properties.

The other obvious way of cutting down cost that had been imposed on the local authorities is to prevent beautifying streets with plastic plants and flowers.

Besides doing away with the unfriendly plastic stuff, it must be pointed out that the regular facelift and beautification of roundabouts at the various councils had been banned.

There was one council in the state which used to spend millions annually on beautification of a particular roundabout.

In a move to weed out graft, the state had also introduced several measures, including cutting down political interferences at the local councils.

While in the past, all the state assemblymen will be sitting on the tender boards that decide on the awarding of the contracts, the Pakatan Government had even gone one step further by removing them from sitting in as local councillors by virtue of them being elected representatives.

The assemblyman’s role in the councils has been restricted to an observer who does not have any say in the decision-making process.

At the tender baords, councillors including those from the political and non-governmental organisation (NGO) quotas are made to sit-in with the council officers to ensure that the contracts are not awarded to cronies.

While tenders are called for most of the contracts, the names of the successful contractors are also displayed at public places, including council offices.

This move has helped to cut monopoly of contracts by certain groups.

Most of the councillors used to be contractors in the past and often used their influence to snatch contracts from the respective councils that they sit in. This situation has changed drastically.

The introduction of the residential committee headed by a councillor who is in charge of a particular zone had also proved effective as the present councillors could be seen working on the ground.

In the past, the councillors were faceless and they are hardly seen working on the ground compared with now where they were supported with the service of a full-time assistant.

The committees have become a bridge between the councils and the people as they have been effective in resolving local issues.

Some of the councils are also allocating a substantial sum of money to the committees so that they can carry out projects that will benefit the people.

The councillors are responsible for handling issues in their respective areas and most of these individuals have been doing a great job.

The state had introduced 24-hour approval for 56 type of businesses that are considered low risk so that entrepreneurs would not kept waiting for months to obtain approvals for their applications.

In the past, endorsement from state assemblyman or councillors are required for application of these licences.

A one-stop centre has been created to look into approval for building renovations and the committee meets once a week and therefore the approval process is much faster now.

The other notable programme that has been launched is the clean-zone campaign aimed at identifying the dirtiest area in a particular council and making these become the cleanest place over a period of a year.

The clean zone has also proved to be a success with many of the commonly known dirty areas seeing remarkable improvement.

To sum up, the state’s drastic action to remove the automatic quota for state assemblymen to sit in as local councillors and bringing in 25% of candidates from the NGOs had done the trick.

Among others, the move to set up the Audit and Good Governance Committee at all the councils will gradually help to transform the image of the councils which had been tarnished by allegations of graft.

This committee has been empowered to investigate the wrongdoings of the council.