Tuesday 30 October 2012
Monday 1 October 2012
Subang Jaya: Thriving but filthy
Monday September 3, 2012
By TAN KARR WEI
Subang Jaya has come a long way since the township’s birth three decades ago. It comes under the Subang Jaya Municipal Council, which also oversees Bandar Sunway, Puchong and Serdang. Starting today, StarMetro will highlight news, issues and events from the areas under MPSJ’s jurisdiction in our Greater Subang column.
Subang Jaya was developed by Sime Darby on a former plantation in the 1980s. Starting out as a modest residential area, the township has matured into a thriving neighbourhood with busy commercial areas such as SS15 and USJ10, among others.
It was originally governed by the Petaling District Council before it was handed over to the Subang Jaya Municipal Council (MPSJ) formed in the mid-1990s.
The SS15 commercial centre is a thriving commercial area in Subang Jaya with myriad food outlets, financial institutions, private colleges, businesses and even a wet market.
However, another thing that is quite hard to miss in SS15 are the random piles of garbage and bulk waste such as old mattresses and broken furniture left along the walkways in front of the shops.
With drains that are filled with rubbish and greasy stagnant water, rat-catching operations have been carried out frequently to control the rodent population.
SS15 Business Community member Datuk Samson Maman said compared to other commercial areas, SS15 posed a unique problem because many of the upper floors of the two- and three-storey shoplots had been converted into student hostels.
“The top floors do not command a high rental rate so it becomes more attractive to unit owners to partition their premises and rent them out to students.
“Whenever the students move out, it is more convenient for them to just throw out their old furniture on the sidewalk.
“It is quite difficult to nab the culprits because they do the dumping at night when there are not many people around,” he said.
Rubbish contractors appointed by the Subang Jaya Municipal Council (MPSJ) only collect a maximum of five bags or 240 litres of domestic waste (which includes waste from food outlets) six days a week from each lot in commercial areas, and most of the bulk rubbish are left in front of shops or at the backlanes.
As part of its licensing regulations, the council currently requires all business owners to pay any one of the 19 contractors on its panel to collect rubbish exceeding the limit at a price to be negotiated between the two parties.
“Most offices do not exceed five bags but the problem arises because the rubbish generated from the higher floors are all thrown at one area on the ground floor and the contractors would consider it as rubbish from just one unit.
“Most landlords do not provide bins for their tenants so the rubbish just end up wherever is convenient for them, either in someone else’s bin or in front of the shoplots,” said Samson.
On the requirement to pay for the collection of additional rubbish generated, he said most operators were reluctant to fork out the extra money because of an existing clause in the licence application which required restaurant owners to appoint a pest control company from MPSJ’s panel.
“They are paying about RM360 a year besides other fees, such as for putting tables and chairs outside their premises or to rent a parking bay.
“Most of them are also reluctant to pay because rubbish from either the residential units or businesses could end up in their bins,” Samson said.
He added that the council’s requirement for businesses to provide roller bins also posed other problems to operators.
“The 240litre roller bins are not cheap and can cost between RM200 and RM300 each.
“The bins usually go missing and many people are reluctant to replace them.
“Some of us will chain them to permanent structures but that poses another problem because it could be blocking the five-foot ways and it also makes it difficult for contractors to pick up garbage from the bins.
“We hope that MPSJ can look into providing community bins where the contractors have ownership of them.
“That way, they can chain the bins so that they do not go missing and have access to the keys to facilitate rubbish collection,” he said.
Waste management consultant Jaron Keng Zi Xiang said food waste made up for about 50% to 60% of rubbish that end up in the landfills.
“Even if people separate their recyclables, it will only reduce their waste by about 20%.
“Separating trash at its source and using biodegradable waste for composting is an option, but it is hardly carried out because it is time-consuming and not economical.
“Compost material cost a lot more than chicken dung fertiliser, so people are reluctant to buy it,” he said.
Keng is also the secretary of the Green and Blue Group — an environmental awareness association — which currently runs a composting project in Universiti Malaya.
An environmental engineering graduate who is currently pursuing his Master’s in public policy, Keng said the problem of rat infestation in SS15 would never be properly solved as long as people threw rubbish into drains and waste water runs through these drains.
“It is as much a behavioural problem as it is a structural one. Most people have the perception that drains are dirty so they do not think twice about throwing things in.
“Also, the drainage system in Malaysia is such that a lot of water from the sinks go straight into the drains instead of into the sewer system, especially in older townships.
“As such, wastewater is not treated before it flows into drains and rivers.
“Even with a grease trap, only solid waste is being filtered and the dirty water still ends up in the drains and rats are attracted to the dirty drains.
“To compound the problem, you will find people washing their dirty dishes by the drains behind many restaurants.
“Wet markets also add to the problem because the water from the washing goes directly into the drains,” he said.
Keng said there were structural and technological methods to counter these problem but those would only be rendered effective with proper guidelines and strict enforcement by the authorities.
Jaron Keng Zi Xiang is Secretary of Malaysia Green and Blue Environmental Protection Society .
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