Subang Jaya municipal councillors feel there is an urgent need for a crematorium in Puchong.

K. Arumugam said it was the local council’s responsibility to provide the facility under Section 94 of the Local Government Act, which specifies that “a local authority may provide suitable places within or without the local authority area to be used as burial grounds or crematoria and shall make proper provision for maintaining the same”.

He said it was timely for the Subang Jaya Municipal Council (MPSJ) to build a crematorium as there have been many requests from the residents.

“Currently, they have to travel to Petaling Jaya or Shah Alam to utilise the facility,” he said.

Tai Cheng Heng agreed, adding that there was a need for the crematorium since land was expensive and scarce.

Arumugam said the MPSJ urban planning department was looking for the best location to house the crematorium and it would most probably be in Puchong.

“The council allocated RM350,000 last year for the project, and we had recommended another RM2mil for next year’s budget,” he said.

Rajiv Rishyakaran said with more funds, an extra burner could be purchased for standby.

Arumugam added that the council should maintain the facility once it is built instead of privatising it.

“If we privatise it, the costs charged by the operator might be higher. More people can benefit from the service if it remains under the council,” he said.

ALL the relevant information on the proposed Kelana Jaya LRT line extension into Subang Jaya was available during the three-month public display last year, said a Prasarana (Syarikat Prasarana Negara Bhd) spokesman.
“In addition to a map of the train route and station locations, the railway schemes clearly showed each station’s design, lay-by and other details,” he said.
“We had Prasarana employees on hand at the display venues to explain the details.
“All the stations have lay-bys and drop-off zones, which have been designed to not ‘eat into’ the existing roads.”
The representative was speaking in response to a StarMetro article published on July 3 headlined Subang folk want more info on LRT extension.
He said numerous meetings and public dialogues had been held with residents associations, NGOs, disabled groups, as well as state and local government authorities on the proposed LRT extension.
“While some information could not be given out earlier due to land and property speculation, all our procedures and technical requirements have been done according to the law,” said the representative.
On the of lack of park-and-ride facilities, he said it was due to land acquisition problems.
“Stations 5 to 9 (SS15 Subang Jaya to USJ14) are located at heavily built-up zones with not much space to build park-and-ride facilities.
“But there will be 1,400 parking bays at Station 4 (Subang Jaya KTM), 1,500 bays at Station 7 (USJ7), and 700 bays at Station 10 (USJ21), with Station 4 being integrated with Subang Jaya KTM Komuter Station.
“There can never be enough park-and-ride facilities, which is why we need an efficient and effective feeder bus system,” said the representative.
“We are working with the local authorities, residents associations, business communities and RapidKL to work out the feeder bus routes based on high density areas, demand pattern and efficient turning points.
“We are looking at, say, a feeder bus service every 15 minutes so people don’t have to drive to the stations. To address illegal parking, there is a need for stricter enforcement and proper civic awareness”
On the close proximity of several stations, the Prasarana representative said that a distance of 500-600m to 1.4-1.5km between two stations is an acceptable stretch.
“If there is a large distance between the stations, then there will be a lot of ground-level congestion at an individual station when people congregate at one station to board the train.
“The LRT line is coming in after the townships are already built up. So a detailed study based on the optimisation factor was carried out to ensure minimum social impact and technical requirements were adhered to, while also considering the population density and land availability.
On ridership figures, the spokesman said they were based on the projected figures by the Census Board.
“It is estimated that the population would number close to 160,000 people by 2015 at the areas around Stations 5 to 10 (SS15 Subang Jaya to USJ21), and close to 200,000 people by 2020,” he said.
The spokesman stressed that in addition to being a solution to traffic congestion, the survival of a high-density area depends on public transport.
Asked about the land acquisition issue at Saujana Residency, he said the matter would be sorted out with the Department of Railways, Prasarana and the local authorities.
On the next step, the spokesman said Prasarana is presently working with the local authorities and state government to review the final portion of the LRT alignment and sort out land constraints issues.
The proposed Kelana Jaya LRT extension line will commence from Lembah Subang – Kelana Business Centre, through Subang, USJ, Alam Megah and ending at the hub in Putra Heights.
The proposed line will consists of 13 new stations and 17km of guideway.
The Ampang LRT extension line will commence from the present Sri Petaling station, passing through Puchong, Kinrara and ending at the hub in Putra Heights.
The proposed line will consist of 13 new stations and 17.7km of guideway. All stations will have facilities such as lifts, escalators, public telephones, surau and toilets.
The stations will also be equipped with facilities for the physically disabled such as ramps, lifts, tac-tiles, ticket counters and toilets.
Both the Kelana Jaya and Ampang lines are expected to be commissioned by end of 2012.
While the deadline for the public feedback has ended, information on the proposed LRT extension is available at www.lrtextension.com.

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.