The mayor of Kuala Lumpur has been reported as saying that paying assessment does not entitle the public to demand that Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur (DBKL) tackle the city’s garbage and litter issues. He suggests that the people do their part.

Maintaining the cleanliness of public spaces and managing waste is a fundamental responsibility of any local authority. DBKL collects RM755 million annually as assessment from property- owners. Cleanliness and health are basic needs and they are often inter-related.

So, when the Datuk Bandar says paying assessment does not entitle one to demand DBKL keep the city’s public spaces clean and that the people must chip in, he is wrong on both counts.

Firstly, Kuala Lumpur is not suburbia or a rural village. If it has a million-and-a-half residents, it daily hosts probably another million visitors and other transients. Transients generate waste, litter the streets, pollute the air and generally strain the city’s public amenities. You do not tell only the residents to do gotong-royong to clean up the mess.

What does DBKL do to justify its RM2,100 million annual budget? It has 24 departments, three units and several branches. But what do they do for the people? License petty traders who block roads and five-foot-ways and dirty the surroundings? Beautify the environs of Jalan Parlimen, Mahameru, Istana Negara, etc?

Is it more important to maintain the jogging and boating facilities of, say, Taman Tasik Perdana or should DBKL first take care of the basic cleanliness of districts where people live and work?

Contrast the manicured bushes along the city’s arterial roads against the pot-holed roads, litter strewn everywhere, the stink of uncollected garbage, poorly maintained or absent pedestrian walkways and overgrown grass of high-density residential and commercial districts like Brickfields and Sentul.

Reportedly, Alam Flora cleans up the roads. Will it clean also pedestrian walkways and other places where people walk but where proper walkways have not been built? Will DBKL install along these places garbage bins that are emptied daily by Alam Flora? Waste management is one reason for the very existence of a local authority.

While DBKL bears this primary responsibility in Kuala Lumpur, it can educate residents on dealing with garbage. This, it is not doing. I have not had educational or informational communication from DBKL in decades including any on waste management.

Once the educational process is in place, DBKL can enforce regulations against littering and illegal disposal of garbage. But enforcement is absent despite signboards threatening action.

Kuala Lumpur is its people. Managing KL is not merely a matter of master planning, transport management, tourism promotion and corporate communications. And waste management is delegated to a private company. The mayor, hopefully, knows he can delegate authority but not responsibility.

Recently DBKL and Alam Flora officials have been talking of raising waste management to the next level, separating garbage and so on. Such talk sounds comical to KL-ites moving daily through garbage strewn everywhere including outside their homes and offices.

Will DBKL clean up its act? Or will the Federal Territories Ministry clean it up? Or do we continue to live in a Third World city?