Around mid of 2015, I couldn't recall how, but somehow, I came across 100 Resilient Cities, Rockefeller Foundation, where cities within the community will help each others to build up capacity for resiliency and provide emergency aid when necessary.
There's no better city I wish to claimed the title than Kuala Lumpur, the very city I was born into. Singapore have been in the community for sometimes and the next city I fervently fond of is Johor Bahru. Of course, these are those cities I'd like to pay tribute, for I was born into, grown up and spend my career life but not necessary the city I might build my own family or spend the rest of my life.
There's a myth about my letters and emails sent to government and local authority. Either the reply is "Keep in View", "Will get back to you", or no reply at all. I hope they just take a really deep look at my writings and another deep contemplation or perhaps meditation. Anyway, the world is moving, time is ticking and environment is depleting!! Earth is a tiny dot within the cosmos yet nature permit only a few planet of such dwell living things but let's not take it for granted. Earth flow with the nature and regulate itself much like how human body function, flush off harmful toxic(In this case, Human is the toxic). The chances of human survival is rivaling with our own action.
Toward a matured& harmonious society in a multicultural& diverse background country like Malaysia, the government need to consider the sentiment of all. Toward a developed and productive nation, we must have the provisions that allow for self governing civic mind. I've written to SPAD to suggest for the matters in the first two paragraphs above. Malaysia has gained independent 59 years ago, a relatively young for a country but certainly not an infant anymore. well, everyone grow rate is different, depending on your pedigree and environmental factors. I would say in terms of social fabric and geographical landscape, Malaysia is the same as Singapore except that we have natural resources to suck on, they don't. Refer to my email to SPAD; Item 1: I suggested to include multi-languages signage and announcement for all public transport especially LRT& KTM where announcement is pre-recorded. Why need to include Chinese& Tamil if majority is Malay and all of us suppose to understand Malay Language? I belief it is about respect for others ethnic group. Singapore for example, 74.2% is Chinese, 13.3% is Malay and Indian is 9.2% but all the MRT signage and announcement is of 4 language i.e. English, Chinese, Malay& Tamil. Except where some of the area name is like intersex (can be Malay or English). However, if you look at Kuala Lumpur, 45.9% is Bumiputra, Chinese is 43.2% and 10.3% Indian. If would to compare to Singapore, our Chinese and Indian population is more than their Malay& Indian so why Singapore (much fast-pace nation)can make effort to include Malay& Tamil into their public transport communication medium while a much laid back Malaysia can not?
Yet, we still shout 1 Malaysia! 1 Malaysia does not means we should only use 1 language. Shouldn't we be more open minded and inclusive like our Prime Minister Najib said; we should embrace our diversity and be more inclusive. It would be nice for our relatives from China, India or Singapore to notice that Malaysia is mature enough to care all its people, when they visit us. On another hand, Chinese is becoming more important as China economy growing present worldwide. Chinese language is essential to access to China market and welcome Chinese tourist. Likewise with India though Tamil is not the official language of India as a whole but pretty much an official language for south India that is their ICT hub& trading powerhouse. Lastly, most of our aged parents that are not exposed to Malay or English education can hardly recognized a word of Malay or English, especially those visiting new area for the first time. Items 2,3&4: Here I bark about provision of schedule, universal communication mode& orientations. I feel embarrassing for uncountable reiteration to plight for such provisions. To be a productive nation, the people need to be able to plan ahead, know exactly where, and have a common understand if language(pronunciation) is a barrier. I've even sketch an example bus/train schedule to SPAD that include distance travel, duration, name of station, code for that station and if possible design according to scale so user can plan& estimate their journey. After thousands of journey on the same route, it is a wonder why the public transport provider still can not estimate the journey duration for each station. Of course, there is traffic jam on certain time which can be state in the schedule too. e.g. 7am-8am departure from A station expect 20mins additional time. Then there is "Peak Hours" where bus is expected to be fully loaded or delay (due to boarding time of passengers). All this can be noted on the schedule which I given the example. Items 3, mentioned about coding which satisfactorily happening in LRT. I would be delighted if bus station too provided such coding, and of course if there is physical bus station. I've on separate occasion talk about the invincible bus station. In order to have a better orientation, I suggested to have either label exit with alphabet or North, East, South& West. This is particularly useful (for station with multiple exit)if you date a friend to meet up at particular station and tell him/her to meet at exit A. Additionally, it can be use as part of direction e.g. To go XXX Musuem you alight at Station YYY then proceed to Exit C for XXX Musuem. Furthermore, I also find the public transport planner or town planner's qualification extremely doubtful. There's literally lack of coordination and logic in connectivity between stations as well as place of interest. If the purpose of public transport is to enable social mobility and provide an alternative to the use of private vehicle then it should be designed in such a way allow for continuity of transportation comfortably, for all (in a universal fashion). Don't bother about the bus station which many outside city center is still a phantom. LRT,KTM& the coming MRT should be integrated and allow for continual accessibility, away from weather interruption. So far, from what I know, Times Square,Putra Mall& KL Sentral is connected to LRT& Monorail. That also with some money spent to have it happen. The Architect for Nu Sentral told me they spend RMXX millions to build the bridge connect to Monorail and that also after numerous lobbying. Sad to say that our public transport provider is still far from hitting the bull eyes of public transport original objectives. Needless to talk about profit-making(or rather loss making). I think the opposition political party have a lot to talk about it; http://ongkianming.com/2016/08/09/press-statement-five-reasons-why-public-transportation-in-malaysia-is-more-expensive-compared-to-singapore/
I'm not inclined to any political party and hope readers decipher my article as facts and constructive views for further improvement.
I do, however, think our public transport infrastructure has been improved over the years, though not without the heavy cost.
I surely think government should find more innovative ideas to attract public transport ridership and ways to improve the transportation from a more holistic manners, such as create satellite city, increase plot ratio for development in vicinity of public transport (tier 1 within 300m radius& tier 2 within 500m radius)while change the minimum provision of car parking lots requirements.
Embed carbon emission information into cashless card and regular ticket with some form of promotion also a way to encourage public transport taking up rate while creating awareness about environment protection. By doing so, we can be more scientifically gauge the benefit of using public transport(I've suggested this to GreenTech-No news from them yet!).
Ideally, all buses& taxi (private vehicle if possible) should comply with minimum COe emission. The convenience way to do it is to comply with Euro standard.
Dangerous, Dirty& Difficult! This is the perception of construction industry. Thus the need to regularized workplace health& safety is impeccable. However, rules and regulations shall be enacted with consideration of its implementation& ramifications. Likewise with quality, Malaysia building's quality is not the worst but still far from developed country's standard. In order to gauge the quality of work, CIDB had make reference to CONQUAS21 (construction quality assessment system) and adjusted some of its scoring before re-brand it as QLASSIC. Malaysia is not the only country who copied the Singapore CONQUAS, country such as Australia, UK, Hong Kong, China, South Africa& India have done the same. Why re-invent the wheel if it's proven effective? What is CONQUAS21? Click here! or Refer to below for the guidebook. I think CIDB(Construction Industry Development Board, Malaysia) did the right thing, by copied the proven success story into Malaysia, though it's not as successful in the real world. Why? QLASSIC is still only a tools to measure quality of construction works though it allow user to know where their quality level stand but it need to be demand driven from the developer side, to motivate contractor finding ways to get their project certified, through proper channel. Only till then, it is truly meaningful. Without a real demand-driven market, It's simply a tools lying in the toolbox. I've written to CIDB concerning others factors attribute to poor quality. Aside from the demand, the industry need to know how to achieve it. Thus, I suggested CIDB to come out with guidelines or classes/workshop. If cost or technical expertise to ironing out the guidebook is a problem then CIDB might as well copy again from BCA (Building& Construction Authority of Singapore). For CONQUAS21 guidebook for each trades (click here!). Now we have the tools and the knowledge, the challenge now is to make construction industry
adopt the tools,
learn the knowledge (Materials, design, workmanship, project management),
Achieve minimum score& go beyond!
while on the authority side is to ensure score given fair and square.
Since QLASSIC is expected to be compulsory, the assessor for such tools is also expected to increase capacity from 3% to 100%. Become compulsory without good governance and integrity lead to corruption. The assessor and accreditation board must have the stamina to withstand the influence of bribery. Good pay,licensing, and difficult in obtaining the qualification as assessor will increase the risk to accept corruption, thus shy them away.
If successful,the quality level of Malaysia building industry will be highly appraised.
To make it a compulsory item, CIDB need to mandate with power to penalized the none-compliance(& penalized enough to have economical scale)which require it to be gazette as law, otherwise there's little meaning to bark& beg developer to do so.
Alternatively, a more liberal approach to increase take up rate or rather use it as tool to achieve certain level of quality is;
to increase the demand from end-consumer side.
peg it to foreign labor permit assessment criteria.
to increase credit hours of compulsory course in QLASSIC for building industry personnel.
Basically goes back to carrot&stick economy.
By judging from the relatively low awareness about quality building and state of economy,the demand from the end-user side is negligible. More so, if it is for investor who would sell off the property upon completion to harvest maximum return(when QLASSIC does not affect property prices). As for some high-end purchaser or tenant, they would prefer CONQUAS over QLASSIC which have better fame in integrity though not necessary point-to-point equivalent as QLASSIC is more stringent and able to conduct full assessment whereas CONQUAS only conduct architectural part of the assessment. So, perception play an important role too. In order to have demand from the property market, QLASSIC need to create value, substantial enough to offset its cost while convince developer and investor that property with QLASSIC can be their competitive advantage for profit making. Another indirect approach is to regulate from the foreign labor number intake. This allow achieving both quality and productivity in the construction industry but would add cost to initial capital (for machinery& equipment) which would then either transfer the cost to investor or at contractor expense(less profit margin); the former would result higher property price. CIDB can benchmark the productivity of each trade or based on project's contract sum with GFA as factor to set number of foreign labor permit allowable. This need to work with others ministry. By limiting the number of foreign labor, the construction market either force to take local (most costly& lazy) or mechanized their operation with greater IBS score. Again, CIDB need to provide avenue for training. Lesser foreign labor means lesser currency outflow, lesser social problem& epidemic of diseases, lower safety risk (less labor). In long run,the contractor will get back the investment but as many/any business, cash is king, especially in construction industry which is more volatile than any other industry. Machinery& equipment invested need to be reuse many times to get back capital invested. Small company might not even have the capital for such games. Thus, CIDB need to ensure machinery rental company exist(economically) to fill the gap. There's also the needs for database gathering for constant monitoring and controlling. Singapore have that kinda thing to make Project Manager like me add more pile workload on desk. CIDB might even get good performer to share their experience or detect fishy business(too good to be true). All the above need to have a knowledge market manpower. CIDB could make more training with credit hours for contractor& designer. Power come with responsibility!
Dear YBhg. Datuk Seri Hj. Ahmad Phesal Hj. Talib (Kuala Lumpur City Mayor)
SUGGESTIONS TO MAKE AVAILABLE SUSTAINABLE SHELTERS FOR THE HOMELESS, IN KUALA LUMPUR
Refer to the above, I am touched to learn about the noble cause of PAM-DBKL Architectural Ideas Competition 2014 In Designing Temporary Shelters for The KL Homeless and would like to give suggestions to build and operate the aforementioned.
As of 2010, homelessness in Malaysia amounting to 1,646 person of which 84% (1,387) is from Kuala Lumpur. The composition of homelessness in the urban according to the statistics from Soup Kitchen are; 1 in 5 due to low wage, 1 in 5 mental illness, 1 in 2 unemployed, 40% were debt ridden, 1 in 5 were age over sixty, 1 in 20 rural-urban migration, 15-30% suffer chronic illness besides domestic violence, drugs addicts and lack of affordable housing& transport being the main reasons. Homelessness in Kuala Lumpur has not gone down in the recent decade despite dropping of poverty line index (PLI) from 2.3% in year 1999 to 0.7% in 2009. The city population is expected to reached 2.2millions in year 2020 thus the need to address the issue now is pressing.
Government had successfully reduced Malaysia overall absolute poverty from 49.3% in 1970 to 3.8% in 2010, however the mechanisms is more effective for rural instead of urban poor. NGO like Kechara Soup Kitchen has been striving to help homelessness for years and with KPWKM initiation on Anjung Singgah, a temporary shelter for counseling& job arrangement, is somewhat antidote to homelessness here.
I would like to suggest commercial advertisements to be sold on the façade space of the temporary shelters, as income to foot its construction and operation cost. Additionally, 3R (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) center, partner with waste management companies& biodiesel processing factories, can be created, function as a center for collection, sorting, processing& marketing for recyclables such as cooking oil, old clothes, old newspaper, plastic bottles, glass& etc. Not only it can reduce our city burden to treat 3,000tones of municipal solid waste per day and the associate cost for landfill or incineration but contribute to raise current recycle rate of 10% toward our target of 40% by 2020, while create income for the homeless during permanent-job matching period.
In the addition, I would like to introduce the notion of Incredible Edible into our city landscape. It was started in Todmorden, UK, year 2007 and has since pollinated to 50 others town in UK and stretch over to Canada, New Zealand& US. Incredible edible is to convert public greenscape or unused spaces (e.g. school, police station, green belt, buffer zone below pylon, green buffer zone& garden) into edible garden. Judging from the favorable tropical climate and fertile land we have, nature is on our side. It’s another temporary jobs (food is a proven lucrative business) for the homeless especially to the rural migrants (80% of population will live in city by 2020 and a portion of homeless are rural migrants). Food prices is on the raise and climate change is part of the attribute. Moreover, it help to reduce the dependency ozone depleting refrigerants, transportation cost and cut down carbon footprint of our food source while give us the freshest& healthiest food.
Furthermore, we can take advantage of CIDB’s free construction skills courses as a platform to increase the employability and income level of the homeless. Replacing foreign labors with trained locals is fundamentally strengthen our national economy and manpower. Where possible, DBKL should consider to replace foreign labor with local as 20% of them attribute to local unemployment.
The suggestions above can only be realized with committed developers, either from DBKL, PAM, Kechara, MGBC, and collaboration among them or the like. Realistically, 20-35% of them (incapable of working) which are mentally incapable, incapable to work due to old age or severe illnesses should be properly channeled to relevant bodies, to ensure their welfare is being taken care of. 35-50% (480-690 potential manpower) homeless due to unemployment or low wages could be running the 3R center or trained as builder in CIDB, prepare to be independent and re-absorb into productive society. Another 10-15% rural migrant or interest group in agriculture can pollinate the ideas of incredible edible by example on designated land. Land below pylons is largely unused or being illegally occupied by private Nursery Company for the same purpose. The only different if DBKL or TNB would to reclaim or allow the land as incredible edible, it will eliminate illegal water& electrical thieves while generating revenue for good cause.
If targeted to resolve 100% (1,387) of homelessness based on 2010 batch by 2020, we would need shelters for 323 persons on top of Anjung Singgah 76 capacity, considered 15%(208) of incapable working and 20%(22.9person) rate of 115 back to productive society monthly for the next 48 months (starting 2016).
Revenue from advertisements on shelter’s façade greatly depend on the location (traffic flow& prospective viewers) and shelter design. A billboard would fetch around RM200, 000 p.a. & an advertisement panel on pedestrian bridge is around RM80, 000 p.a. Erection cost around 30% (discounted on rental), I believe it would contribute a substantial revenue for the program.
On a broader perspective to curb homelessness due to lack of affordable housing, in KL.
The Department of Statistics Malaysia, year 2010, show that absolute poverty or PLI adopted (as per 9th Malaysia Plan) in peninsular Malaysia is RM 763 (USD 254) per household size of 4.1 which is mean per capita PLI of RM 194 (USD64) per month. However if absolute poverty is a characterized by severe deficiency of basic human needs which including foods, shelters, safe drinking water, education, health, sanitation facilities and information, as per World Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen 1995, then the PLI adopted is questionable if even RM2,000 per month cannot afford a house cost RM100,000.
Honestly, as of 2014-3rd quarter, the average cost of low-cost flat in KL are RM93, 371 (as per JPPJ data)which require household income of at least RM2,138/month to qualify for loan. The average KL residential prices is around RM500, 000 which required at least RM6, 868/month to qualify for repayment of RM2, 060/month (BLR 6.6%, Interest rate 4.25% for 35 years). The existing low-cost flat stock in KL is about 22% (95,647 units) and the second lowest cost residential (average cost RM184, 579/unit), flat, is 11% of the total 427,669 units. With only 0.78% (436 units) of low cost& 0.67% (374 units)flat of the total 55,584 units of residential under construction, It would be difficult for the 65.8% of youth who earn less than RM2,000 starting salary to own a low cost flat.. Only 6.5% of working adult earn more than RM5, 000. Youth might consider to take up some portion of the 7,921 units (5% of 160, 907 units) of Selangor low-cost flat that are under construction as their first home or save more money for better option.
House ownership has drop from 67.3% in year 2000 to 59% in year 2010. In 2011, the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey rates markets whose property prices are 5.1 times median income or more as “severely unaffordable” and we are at 9, based on average KL residential property of RM485,000 against annual household income of RM 54,000. Government should keep housing affordable not by building low-cost housing but increase household income by increase productivity beside monitor GINI coefficient to ensure more equally distributed wealth.
In Congruent with Malaysia Green Building Confederation’s vision; “To make Green buildings and Communities available to all Malaysians”. As member of MGBC and qualified Green Building Index (GBI) facilitator, I would like to volunteer my services as GBI facilitator for the program.
Thank you.
………………………….
TAY KIAN GUAN
Copy to:
1.Ar. Chan Seong Aun, PAM-Wisma Bandar,Level 11, No 18 Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman,50100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
2.Dato’ Ruby Khong, KECHARA SOUP KITCHEN- 17 Jalan Barat, (Off Jalan Imbi), 55100 Kuala Lumpur, MALAYSIA.
3.Ar. Sarly Adre, MGBC- A-29-9, Block A, Menara UOA Bangsar, 59000 Bangsar, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
In respond to the rampant illegal construction workers and outflow of our Ringgit to foreign land at the staggering height, I wrote some suggestions to several key stakeholders about my concern. Raising productivity not only push up the salary scale but also elevate the need of knowledge and skills in works thereby motivate the locals financially and mentally. this can be done without increasing the overall construction cost, in long term, as less manpower is required to do the same amount of works though for higher cost per unit.
Undeniably there will be hard to start but once it's moving, it will keep moving like a locomotive in action....
