The Majlis Perbandaran Ampang Jaya (MPAJ or the Ampang Jaya Municipality), like municipalities in Malaysia, is known for its tardiness, incompetence, file-shuffling, arrogance and a well-earned reputation for arrogance. Apply for permission to extend your kitchen or your bathroom, and you wait for months, if not years, for it. We know why. You are expected to call on the officer and offer him 'a little something', and if it is what he had in mind, you get your permission. If you do not want to be caught for bribery and corruption, there is the helpful 'runner' who would do it for you for a fee. If you would rather not, it is a futile wait. Some throw caution to the winds to build it anyway.

If you are a clerk, or a teacher, or a middling civil servant, or someone who cannot throw his weight around, an officer of the municipality would demand you break down the extension after you have built it or, typically, be fined RM250 a day until you do. One who built a house in Hartamas which inadvertently encroached on public land by six inches, is told to pull it down or be fined that amount a day until he does. He settled it for RM50,000, some to City Hall but most into the officer's pocket. The Prime Minister insists there is no corruption, and those who allege it must produce proof. But when his former, now jailed, deputy prime minister did, he looked the other way. His principle seems to be: Do as I say, not as I do.

You build a 'rumah haram' (illegal house) and the Federal Reserve Unit is there as municipal bulldozers will pull down your house without by your leave. But let a Tan Sri or some one high and mighty build one, and no one in authority would dare pull it down. The Selangor mentri besar, Dato' Mohamed Khir Toyo, says about forty houses in MPAJ are 'rumah haram', none had building plans approved nor certificates of fitness issued, some, if not most, built illegally on MPAJ land. One of the 40 'rumah haram' belonged to the former armed forces chief, Tan Sri Ismail Omar: MPAJ did not approve its building plans nor issue a certificate of fitness.

The MPAJ must act -- and quickly -- to demolish the 'rumah haram' in the area, with FRU protection if they have to. Or order them, as the municipalities often do, to demolish them or face a daily fine of RM250 until they do. For no difference exists, in law, between a Tan Sri's 'rumah haram' and a squatter's. I would argue the Tan Sri be punished the more severely, for he could, by his position and influence, get the required approvals far more speedily than a mere citizen could. And deliberately decided not to.

Would that happen? Would the iron tree blossom? Dr Khir stepped in when the MPAJ reacted, in high dudgeon, to order all residents to move or face a fine of RM250 a day until they did. A near revolt of the titled and well-placed residents, and a flurry of telephone calls from the high and mighty, put a stop to that. Indeed, Dr Khir called an urgent meeting of engineers, geologists, and other experts, normally and deliberately ignored when nature is shortcircuited for profit, to reverse the MPAJ order. MPAJ, not to be outsmarted, promptly told the residents in another notice that it would not be responsible for whatever happens. This is curious. The MPAJ is not responsible for what happens in its vicinity. The mudslide that destroyed Tan Sri Ismail's home came from the retaining wall of the collapsed Highland Towers property, put at MPAJ's insistence, not to prevent mudslides but to keep MPAJ officers happy. When the developer did not build the drainge and other earthworks, the MPAJ did not care. In other words, MPAJ, by its inaction, caused the mess. Would it take responsibility? How could it? It is a government department. The general would not have built his million-ringgit 'rumah haram' if it had.

It raises disturbing questions about how government departments meant to serve the people make their lives difficult with petty restrictions, unthinking policies, and capricious enforcement. The citizen is held hostage. Those who should be at the beck and call of the public are often busy doing nothing when you come. When police in its inefficiency allowed hundreds of thousands of police summonses to be unpaid, it spread panic amongst motorists by threatening to take them to the courts if they did not pay within a time limit. When it should have opened additional counters and for longer hours, it opened a few counters in a few police stations, and motorists had to queue for ten or twelve hours only to find the counters closed when it was their turn to pay.

You are pushed from pillar to post to pay your rates, or compound your traffic offences. But it is not only the police. Go to any government department, you wait for hours for service. I have yet to be in a government service counter which does not have a queue, often has to wait for hours to be served. So when MPAJ flexes its muscles to hide its incompetence, it does what every incomeptent government does: blame everyone but themselves for the mess. Incompetene is the thread that runs through this caring National Front (BN) administration.

So, why do normal law-abiding citizens build extensions, or houses, without approval? House buyers usually buy their poorly built houses from assembly-line built houses in housing estates, and they do not know the hassles the builder had to go through. But to extend their house -- usually to build an extra room or enlarge the kitchen or bathroom -- they have to submit their plans and often wait for years. One official in City Hall insisted on a Tudor-like structure for a skyscraper. The developer had to pay for the official's daughter's wedding before he had permission to build as he envisioned.

The long and short of it is that if you are not prepared to bribe the officials, you would not get the approvals. If you build anyway, the FRU would turn up with City Hall bulldozers and mow it down for what you built is 'rumah haram'. But if you are a retired general of the armed forces, or a Tan Sri or some one who think they are the movers and shakers of society. Then you are invited to build your 'rumah haram', and the officials, from the mentri besar down, would find ways to ease your discomfort when your house is flattened in a mudslide or to rescure it from the wreckers.

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my

______________________
Terbitan : 30 Nov 2002

Ke atas Home