Last Full Board Meeting for 2008

Tapah District Council held it’s the last full board meeting for 2008 today, and perhaps the last session for me as Tapah town councilor.

Apart from regular contribution through-out the meeting today which include amending minutes of meeting, suggestion to bring down safety incident numbers along federal road in Tapah, correcting numbers from finance committee, proposal to black-list vendors and suppliers who did not perform, my observation on Tapah district council performances, I have ended my time with 3 simple suggestions to the council for 2009:

1. Prohibit smoking in all District Council parks and children playground

2. Provide dustbins along all main streets in all major towns within Tapah District starting with Tapah.
Most councilors have used up their RM3000 area improvement funds for “gotong-royong” or spring cleaning—which is mainly for cleaning up streets, clearing drains and cutting grass in respective areas. Most of the councilors will agree that it was a good exercise for the public. Behind these praises, behind these joyous notes that we have done a good project, we are not addressing the rubbish issues in Tapah. We would not have spent the RM3000 for spring cleaning if our street cleaning team, rubbish collectors and grass cutters had done a good job. Also, there are hardly or no public dustbin along the main streets of Tapah which such as Station Road and Jalan Raja.

3. Meet the people session
Town councilors should organize meet the people session every month or at least once a quarter. For example, it can be held every first Monday of the month at 7, 8 or 9 pm. Meet the people session can be organized at the respective community hall or “dewan orang ramai”. It will afford a great avenue to gather feedback from the locals and their plights, as well as to share with them on our on-going initiatives.

4. Annual report card for town councilors starting from 2010.

It is a setback that none of the elected representatives within Tapah district (apart from Sivanesan, the State Assemblyman for Sungkai) have attended Tapah District Full Board meeting through-out my time as a town councilor despite official invitations from the District Office. These elected representatives are MP for Tapah, State Assemblyman for Cenderiang and State Assemblyman for Air Kuning.