www.ipohecho.com.my IPOH Happy Your Community Newspaper Chinese New Year ! echoechoServing the people of Ipoh, Taiping, Kuala Kangsar, Gopeng and Kampar. FREE for collection from our office and selected outlets, on 1st & 16th of the month. ISSUE PP 14252/10/2008(007226) February 01- 15, 2008 30 sen for delivery to your house by news vendors within Perak. 43 RM 1 prepaid postage for mailing within Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei. LINES OF BROKEN DOWN DUMPSTERS POINT TO IPOH’S GARBAGE CRISIS Illegal dumps are everywhere. So, where does the buck stop? Jerry Francis reveals the dirty details – page 3 2 IPOH ECHO February 01 - 15, 2008 Your Community Newspaper ISLAND MEMORIES continued from page 1 www.ipohecho.com IPOH IPOH’S ‘TOP-SECRET’ echoYour Community Newspaper far to confirm the seriousness claims that the waste collection of the problem. There are in his neighbourhood used to GARBAGE TRUCKS From the Editor’s Desk By Fathol Zaman Bukhari rubbish dumps that are just be thrice weekly _ now they 100 metres apart from one are lucky if their rubbish bins another. There are illegal get collected once a week. THERE ARE – rubbish dumps even in Civic-conscious Ipohites GETTING BY commercial areas, just outside have taken steps managing SPOOKED the City Council Complex. domestic waste. Households Only 64 of the 122 are now keeping seafood and ALARMISTS 20,000 vehicles allotted for waste poultry in freezers until the disposal duties operate daily. dumpsters show up. “What By our own correspondent. I was looking forward to senses. The mad rush to fill government. and small - selling controlled OF THESE This would make for an else does one do?” asks a the fireworks display that up was an exercise in futility There was no end to goods for profits across the appallingly inefficient rating ratepayer. “If we leave bags When Ipoh Echo manded to know who had has become commonplace after all. the blame game. Hawkers Golok River in Thailand. DISGUSTING even within a normal waste in the bins, we have to live staff photographer, Rosli given Rosli permission to in major towns all over They would have been throughout Perak cut down on Smuggling is a way of collection scenario. For a with stench; they’d be filled DUMPS Mansor, attempted to dis- take his photographs. He Malaysia whenever the better off watching the food prepared for customers. life for these border dwellers rubbish-laden city like Ipoh, with maggots and think of all cover why almost 50% of was apparently unimpressed country ushers in a new fireworks than queue-jumping Ah Fook, the char keow as it is their livelihood. It it amounts to a disaster. the scavenging stray dogs and by Jerry Francis the city’s garbage dump- by the storekeeper’s ear- year. This New Year was no at the petrol pumps and going teow seller at Ipoh’s famous has been going on for ages. cats.” sters were non-function- lier reaction, the fact that the exception. bonkers over rumours and Holly Wood Restaurant Unless stern action is taken, Ipoh, once described as chased the erring dumpster CLEAR THE DUMPS Others think differently. ing, he encountered secu- gates of the compound were City Council had speculation that failed to contemplated raising the price smuggling activities will ‘the cleanest town’ in the and its crew. FIRST! They throw their plastic bags rity controls and authori- wide-open, that there was no organised a 5-day programme materialise. of his fried keow teow by an continue, come rain or shine. country, has become littered They got an earful! into rivers or just add them tarian attitude worthy of a guard on duty at the entrance to celebrate the end of 2007 additional 30 sen if his supply The problem is economic with illegal rubbish dumps. Datuk Ismail’s words: For some unexplained to uncollected heaps on their nuclear installation. and that there were certainly and the coming of 2008. All ANOTHER CRISIS of cooking oil was reduced to in nature. It has to do with The deterioration from “We want to stress to the reason we now hesitate way to work. It is an expedient Finding the gate to no warning signs suggesting activities were centred at the a trickle. supply and demand. “cleanest” to “rubbish people, particularly the MBI’s City Service Office the area was one covered by MBI Square and they had a But the excitement did The government deemed Demand for cooking strewn” is nothing less than council’s employees, that we and Workshop compound top-security precautions. profound effect on Ipohites, not end there. Before the first it fit to respond in kind and oil and flour escalates during a scandal. do care about their welfare. in Buntong wide open and He was equally unim- especially the young. week of January was over respond it did. festivities and this is nothing Current statistics are In this way, we hope to instill unguarded when he arrived, pressed with the photogra- Music and songs are a another crisis hit the country. strange. Profiteering is alarming. confidence in the employees Rosli drove in for a hundred pher’s very reasonable ob- guaranteed crowd puller and This time it was for real. FLOODING THE inherent in all businessmen. Consider this: there are so they may deliver dedicated yards or so and parked his servation that lines of non- the organisers were only too The nation was faced MARKET Who doesn’t want to earn now more than 20,000 illegal and efficient service to the car. Lines of broken down functioning garbage trucks happy to oblige. While the with a shortage of the more? Wholesalers and garbage dumps scattered all residents of the city. trucks were crammed into hardly constituted the sort of youngsters were drawn to domestic kind that would On Tuesday, January retailers are equally culpable. over the city – an average “What the City Council every available space around subject matter requiring spe- the stage and booths erected turn ugly if the problem was 8, 2008, it released 70,000 The government should of one dump to every 33 expects in return is cooperation a central workshop. cial permits to photograph. for the special occasion, allowed to fester. Cooking oil tonnes of cooking oil into the anticipate these developments residents! And the numbers from all residents,’ the Datuk With that the official another event was unfolding and wheat flour were in short market. The supply of wheat and react accordingly. It are mounting. added. ASSENT GIVEN ordered Rosli to hand over with much less fanfare than supply. flour was also increased to should adopt a proactive Particularly worrying is The then mayor right- his film immediately. anticipated. the fact that the City Council fully believed that team effort It reached such a critical satisfy demand. The flooding stance rather than a wait-and- Gathering his camera level that rationing was of the market with cooking see attitude. appears to be ineffectual was needed to keep Ipoh tick- And another . gear, the photographer ORDER: JOSTLING MOTORISTS – quite unable to cope with or ing. He saw that the Council considered an option by the oil and wheat flour helped The setting up of the approached what appeared contain the situation. had to lead with him at its talking about keeping the move, an unthinking one that DELETE THEM! authorities. overcome the problem. National Price Council and to be a male storekeeper I was about to make my President of the A major disaster that the hype surrounding the helm. city clean. We leave the fails to consider the hazardous immediately outside the Rosli explained he end-of-the-year drive around NO-NONSENSE Spurred by their hard- topic alone. Why tackle it effect the simple act does to workshop complex and was working with a modern the city to join the rest in the APPROACH working leader, councillors when there is the mammoth the health situation of the explained he had arrived to digital camera and there was merriment but got no further began thinking how they problem of clearing rubbish city. take pictures of the numerous no film. than the traffic junction The slide into heaps might encourage the dumps, a task which is now There are mattress off-road dumpsters. The “Then delete all leading to Jalan Tasek. of unmanaged mess seems community at large to regard proving beyond the capacity sellers who cry “Tilam lama, man nodded his assent and the photographs you The three petrol kiosks unstoppable. The closest Ipoh their Council as a body with of our Council? tukar baru” (old mattress for Rosli went to work. have taken,” ordered the near the junction were jam- came to regaining its 1960s a heart. Soon they adopted the Protect. Cover-up. Look new one!) and, after making Rosli had completed workshop official. packed with motorists jostling clean image was in 1993 when “We Care” motto. Employees the other way and hope it all a sale, chuck the old one taking approximately 10 The photographer felt, for space at the pumps. They Datuk Ismail Shah Bodin took wore T-shirts with “We Care” sorts itself out in the long run. into the next illegal dump individual photographs under the circumstances, had joined the mad rush to over as Datuk Bandar. emblazoned on them. The trouble is it won’t. they pass. There are also the when a senior workshop discretion was probably the fill up prior to the perceived Datuk Ismail employed A resident in Taman small lorry operators who are official suddenly appeared, better part of valour, and imposition of an oil price a no-nonsense approach in WHAT HAPPENED TO Tinggi, off Jalan Silibin, contracted to collect garbage accompanied by a uniformed began to comply.