A ‘special’ task force to clean up Kuala Lumpur

Hopefully this is no “all-fart-and-no-shit” promise by City Hall

COMMENT

By Raja Abdul Karim

Some 15 years ago or so I visited London with the family and did the regular tourist routine, visiting the historical landmarks like the Houses of Parliament, eating fish and chips doused in vinegar and wrapped in yesterday’s edition of The Sun…

It was late afternoon and I had to call an old friend, who had made London his home, to confirm the venue and time for the dinner he was treating us to.

In those pre-historic days of no handphones, the wife pointed out to the iconic fire engine red telephone booth near the Queensway tube station along Bayswater Road adjoining Kensington Gardens.

Neat and nice on the outside, and there was no graffiti daubed on the glass panels. Would I be able to ship one home?

But there were some neat buff coloured postcard sized thick-paper advertisements, not the garish and coarsely printed jobs in all sizes and languages posted around Kuala Lumpur by loan sharks, “licensed” moneylenders, property developers and enterprising individuals offering a profusion of services, legitimate and otherwise.

A little wad of gum stuck the advertisements neatly to the sides of the long telephone box. The advertisements were all about naughty services.

“Erection and Demolition Expert” read the title of one advertisement, and it gave several sexy Swedish names like Ingrid, Klara and Astrid with telephone numbers. Other advertisements were not so subtle.

So, it was with great expectations that I welcomed, not the sex services, but Kuala Lumpur City Hall’s move earlier this week to set up a “special task force” to tackle the defacement of public property, and the shop front of the long-suffering business establishments.

Road signs are being defaced, lamp posts are not spared and legitimate billboards plastered with illegal advertisements…

City Hall deputy director-general Datuk Normah Malik said they would work with the Communication and Multimedia Commission, other public agencies and the private sector to rid Kuala Lumpur of this scourge.

But my enthusiasm turned to doubt with a tinge of cynicism when I realised that the brazen loan sharks and moneylenders had been getting away with it for years.

Equally dismaying was the fact that the various branches of public service had also announced the setting up of numerous “special” task forces over the years to tackle the numerous problems faced by the people.

A task force is already a “special” group of experts or experienced people who size up the problem at hand and come up with solutions to fix it.

So how had these Malaysian “special task forces” performed? Traffic fines remain unpaid; loan sharks go about their business unhindered; pilfering in public agencies go unchecked; frittering away public money with dubious purchases continues unabated.

The bad guys are thumbing their noses at you.

Perhaps, because the loan sharks and moneylenders have defences provided by certain branches of the civil services, they have been able to survive the action against them.

We don’t need the “all-fart-and-no-shit” promises that have had been thrown at us.

What we need is the original kind of task force that the US navy formed during the Second World War that needed no “special” designation but which came out with its guns blazing to blast away the enemy in the Pacific Ocean whenever the occasion demanded.

Raja Abdul Karim is an FMT reader.