A typical polluted river in Malaysia. This one is Sungai Juru or Juru River up north in the state of Penang (the PM's state)
I shook my head in disbelief when I saw the news on tv last night. The story was about Malaysia's Natural Resources and Environment Minister, Datuk Seri Azmi Khalid aka Mr. Normala Samsudin. In his press conference after a function in Johor, he openly admitted that the 14-year old "Cintai Sungai Kita" or "Love Our Rivers" campaign was a failure and will be replaced with a more comprehensive one in June. In fact, the government was going to spend an additional RM7 million to rebrand the campaign. And of course, dear old Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi will relaunch it. Isk, isk, so typical Malaysian way of doing it. I mean, what the hell?!! What is wrong with our leaders, anyway? Doesn't the minister know that even if you spent a billion ringgit in campaigns, it won't change anything as long as the typical Malaysian mentality remains the same.
Well, he's right about one thing though. The campaign is a failure. Just look at the rivers in Malaysia - filled with all sorts of unimaginable elements, objects, things which I don't even want to discuss. Azmi said that of the 186 riverine systems, 17 were so badly polluted they could not sustain any form of life.
Here's a little background dugged from Bernama : The "Love Our Rivers" campaign was launched by the Drainage and Irrigation Department (DID) way back in 1993 to educate the public on the importance of rivers, while highlighting the critical state of pollution faced by Malaysia's rivers. The country has about 150 major river basins, of which 100 are in the peninsula. The campaign, mainly involves marshalling individuals, communities, schools, corporate bodies and the public sector to carry out projects like river cleaning, river beautification, pollution rehabilitation, river adoption and education programmes.
You see what the problem is here? We in Malaysia are so good at making things look good on paper. Here in Malaysia, everything looks good on paper, to a point that sometimes it's almost flawless. But then comes the question of implementation. This is where we suck. We really, really suck when it comes to doing it.
I think the government should just channel the RM7 million to rehabilitate the most polluted rivers in the country in a sort of panic-mode like manner. Treat the usage of that RM7 million as emergency funds to save rivers. At least we'll know for sure whether the rivers could be still be saved or not. Once we manage to rehabilitate a few rivers, then we'll already have the required momentum and all that is left to do is continue to duplicate what has been done earlier to those few experimental rivers to other rivers nationwide. Makes more sense, right?
Sudah-sudah lah tu with all this rebranding and relaunching crap. Enough is enough with all this rebranding shit which is just a waste of money. Money that we don't have actually. And if the government is really serious in saving our rivers from being further polluted, why don't we rope in the armies of "mat rempits" to help out do the cleaning and rehabilitating. If they can successfully parachute from a plane onto the bleak and frigid North Pole at ultra sub-zero temperatures, I'm sure they can also successfully clean our rivers under a heavenly equatorial climate. What say you Putera Umno? Are you game for it? Nah, I thought so....
I shook my head in disbelief when I saw the news on tv last night. The story was about Malaysia's Natural Resources and Environment Minister, Datuk Seri Azmi Khalid aka Mr. Normala Samsudin. In his press conference after a function in Johor, he openly admitted that the 14-year old "Cintai Sungai Kita" or "Love Our Rivers" campaign was a failure and will be replaced with a more comprehensive one in June. In fact, the government was going to spend an additional RM7 million to rebrand the campaign. And of course, dear old Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi will relaunch it. Isk, isk, so typical Malaysian way of doing it. I mean, what the hell?!! What is wrong with our leaders, anyway? Doesn't the minister know that even if you spent a billion ringgit in campaigns, it won't change anything as long as the typical Malaysian mentality remains the same.
Well, he's right about one thing though. The campaign is a failure. Just look at the rivers in Malaysia - filled with all sorts of unimaginable elements, objects, things which I don't even want to discuss. Azmi said that of the 186 riverine systems, 17 were so badly polluted they could not sustain any form of life.
Here's a little background dugged from Bernama : The "Love Our Rivers" campaign was launched by the Drainage and Irrigation Department (DID) way back in 1993 to educate the public on the importance of rivers, while highlighting the critical state of pollution faced by Malaysia's rivers. The country has about 150 major river basins, of which 100 are in the peninsula. The campaign, mainly involves marshalling individuals, communities, schools, corporate bodies and the public sector to carry out projects like river cleaning, river beautification, pollution rehabilitation, river adoption and education programmes.
You see what the problem is here? We in Malaysia are so good at making things look good on paper. Here in Malaysia, everything looks good on paper, to a point that sometimes it's almost flawless. But then comes the question of implementation. This is where we suck. We really, really suck when it comes to doing it.
I think the government should just channel the RM7 million to rehabilitate the most polluted rivers in the country in a sort of panic-mode like manner. Treat the usage of that RM7 million as emergency funds to save rivers. At least we'll know for sure whether the rivers could be still be saved or not. Once we manage to rehabilitate a few rivers, then we'll already have the required momentum and all that is left to do is continue to duplicate what has been done earlier to those few experimental rivers to other rivers nationwide. Makes more sense, right?
Sudah-sudah lah tu with all this rebranding and relaunching crap. Enough is enough with all this rebranding shit which is just a waste of money. Money that we don't have actually. And if the government is really serious in saving our rivers from being further polluted, why don't we rope in the armies of "mat rempits" to help out do the cleaning and rehabilitating. If they can successfully parachute from a plane onto the bleak and frigid North Pole at ultra sub-zero temperatures, I'm sure they can also successfully clean our rivers under a heavenly equatorial climate. What say you Putera Umno? Are you game for it? Nah, I thought so....
No comments:
Post a Comment