Asset mismanagement.

 Tuesday 29.10.2024

I've made statements in public, and written numerous times, and spoke about it in speeches made over my career - about the mismanagement of our assets in this country. Building public facilities and developing natural resources have not gone to waste in my Malaysia. Sadly, managing them for future use is a total loss for both the authorities and the general population.

A stark case in point is the current news on the action against the "blue tents" on the Telok Kemang picnic beach in PD.

Back in 1995 I spoke in the State Assembly, no less, about the disregard for the beautiful beaches of Telok Kemang by the Government of that time. Greedy investors had managed to get the approval to build hotels right onto the water edges at the beach.  Complete with sewer outlets right where bathers would swim. 

I said then that the beach was our God-given asset. PD beaches were the few sandy and mud-free spots on the Peninsula's West Coast.  Kelang is muddy, with the mangroves right up the Perak coastline. We should respect this gift and treasure it. 

Instead there was the uninformed government permitting the human construction right on this treasure. I pointed out that this doesn't happen in Phuket. Today Phuket is a well-known resort island, when PD was already a resort town a long time ago when Phuket was still a rubber-plantation and tin-mining island. Of course in the West and the US they wouldn't dare touch their valuable natural assets.

The beautiful PD beaches should remain natural and uncluttered for generations to continue to enjoy. All construction, as in Phuket, should be on the leeward side. There's plenty of land there. Why build on the treasure ? The stupidity of the uninformed minds in the government at that time must have been unimaginable.

Right now PD is not yet a total loss. But it soon will be if something right and something drastic is not immediately done to remedy all this. Already the natural nice spaces have been cut down, and the peace and quiet largely lost. But these can be reversed. Still.

The "blue tents" are recent happenings, showing the government's illogically insensitive behaviour still remaining, in spite of all these complains, like mine, that must have been heard. People have written in the papers about their concern. They have brought up their complains in all kinds of places. I spoke in the State Assembly, for heaven's sake !

I repeat here: Malaysia can build like all other world builders. But maintenance escapes Malaysia. Maintenance of constructions, maintenance of natural resources - all seem foreign. Just look around.

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