Most of us are familiar with the phrase "give a person a fish, he will live for a day, but teach him to fish, he will live for the rest of his life!"This is basically the motto or slogan that our zone 16 has adopted and thus even on our t-shirts this sentiment is expressed clearly, "our community, our responsibility!"
Since I have assumed being the councilor of MPSJ almost 5 months ago, and delegated to be in charged of zone 16 which covers Pusat Bandar Puchong and Bandar Puteri, we have established a multiracial Jawatan Kuasa Penduduk (JKP) which have dedicatedly and committedly given their time, energies and resources towards the improvement of their community.
Many residents association and community leaders have also began to take on the task of developing their respective communities by learning "how to fish". I suppose this task was never really inculcated among the residents because in the past, political party representatives would probably do most of these tasks for the people.
However, it is proven over and over again in history and contemporary social development approaches that this "dole out or welfare" approach has never really sustained development.
Ironically, this approach of involving the stakeholders in development and improving the communities is no alien concept because MPSJ and other local councils in the whole of Malaysia have in fact adopted the development concept of Local Agenda 21 (LA 21) since some years ago.
This initiative was in fact a very hands on approach to engage stakeholders (the residents themselves) in the development of their own communities. However sad to say some majlis have translated this apporach to merely conducting activities such as gotong royong, planting tress, and doing some social activities in the communities.
But the essence of LA 21 is not just doing activities with the community but actually involving them in debating, discussing and finally implementing community improvement initiatives. This entails handling budgets, brainstorming ideas, and also having close cooperation with the different departments of the MPSJ.
I know there are still residents out there in our zone who still expect everything to be done for them, and if the councilor or the JKP members do not fulfill this expectation, they will write us off as not having performed our duties! Unfortunately this is a very short sighted view and needs to be changed.
Of course there are those within our zone who are constantly seizing the opportunity to further their own interests (either political, monetary or just for the sake of asserting their power) by criticising and putting down the efforts of the newly installed JKP and of course I as the new councilor.
But I believe we should not be too preoccupied with defending ourselves by hastily calling for press conferences or circulating counter arguments towards these charges. Ultimately our role is to intensively organise our community and develop a critical mass of people who are genuine and sincere in wanting to "learn how to fish", and not expecting others to "give them a fish".
So at the end of the day if we have shortcomings, let us learn and improve ourselves, however if we are attacked with false and malicious accusations, let us take it like "water off the duck's back". The truth will reveal itself because good changes are indeed happening as more and more people in zone 16 "learn how to fish!"
Tan Jo Hann, Councilor Zone 16
