The Star, Thursday September 27, 2012

Taskforce to tackle flood problems in Kajang

By VIJENTHI NAIR 

vijenthi@thestar.com.my

A special taskforce has been set up to find permanent solution to the floods in Kajang.

Kajang Municipal Council (MPKj) president Datuk Hasan Nawawi Abd Rahman said the special taskforce comprising relevant departments and agencies would be endorsed at the council’s fullboard meeting today.

“Starting October, the team will be working on finding an immediate, short term and long term solution to the series of recent floods that has devastated the people in Kajang,” he said at the monthly public complaints monitoring meeting,

To address the problem of damaged roads caused by leaking cement lorries, MPKj is engaging the public to help catch the culprits in action, in exchange for cash reward.

“If the public can capture photographs showing the cement lorry together with its plate number leaking cement on the road and reports it to us, they stand to receive up to RM500 in cash for each successful action taken against the culprit,” he said.

“The cement lorries on the other hand, will be compounded up to a maximum of RM1,000 if found at fault,” he said.

During the meeting, Hasan also instructed the enforcement officers to check on the complaints by the public on parking lots being hogged by business operators by placing cones or items like unused tyres for their convenience.

“Business operators are only allowed to rent one lot outside their premises in the town area for RM150 per month while for the outskirts, we can consider allocating more parking lots for rent for RM100 per month.

“Hogging of parking lots is contributing to a lot of congestion especially in the commercial area, causing the public to double or even triple parking their vehicles leaving a narrow space for other vehicles to move to run errands.

“We know many are hogging the parking spaces illegally.

“We are aware of the worsening situation.

“Enforcement officer will be making their rounds to check on the complaints soon.

“We are also discussing on installing metered parking system to avoid parking space hogging and allow more parking turnover.

“The majority of the business owners will also be happy with the system because it also means more customer traffic,” he said.