ICW New office Bearers 2018 - 2019. Seated from left: Halida Ali
(Assistant Secretary), Tina Leong (Secretary), Dr. Richard Ng (President), Dr.
Kamaruddin Yaakob (Deputy President), S. Thinakaran (Treasurer). Standing from
left: Assokan Kandiah, Toh Kam Yuan, Francis Wong, Shereen Wong and Shirley
Foong
Ipoh
City Watch (ICW), the watch dog for Ipohites, elected a 1Malaysia team as new
office bearers for the period 2018 – 2019 during its 4th Annual General Meeting
held in Ipoh recently. The new team has wowed to ensure that its vision of
making Ipoh the most liveable city in Malaysia is achieved.
The
25 members who attended the AGM has re-elected Prof. Dr. Richard Ng from Open
University Malaysia as the President and Dr. Kamaruddin Yaakob from University
Sultan Azlan Shah as Deputy President. The members have also re-elected Tina
Leong as the Honorary Secretary and Thinakaran as the Treasurer.
Three
resolutions were raised and debated.
In
the first resolution, members have agreed that ICW maintain its stand to remain
apolitical where members are free to decide who they wish to vote during GE14.
However, ICW will openly support candidates especially in the Kinta Valley who
are committed to help make Ipoh liveable in particular on 5 areas; Safety,
Cleanliness, Wellness, Affordable Cost of Living and Efficient Transportation
system. So we want to wait and see the manifesto of the candidates vying to
become the people’s representatives.
In
the second resolution, ICW urge the State Government and Ipoh City Council to
ensure that they walk the talk in terms of promoting Social Business concept.
Since Ipoh was declared a Social Business City on in September 2016, very few
businesses run under the social business city concept has emerged especially
that involved NGOs in Perak. ICW would like to urge the Ipoh City Council who
has been tasked to handle Social Business in Perak to actively engage and
provide startup funds and other aids to NGOs to help them set up Social
Business which can help the government to solve many of the social problems
while reducing NGO dependency on government funding.
ICW
also urge the Ipoh City Council and the Perak State Government to focus on
Sustainable Development Goals especially on Poverty Eradication, Zero Hunger,
Wellness, Sustainable Cities and Communities and Commitment towards the use of
Clean Energy and Carbon Emission Reduction.
ICW also want all future development plans to be gender sensitive and
disable friendly and adhere to green technology.
According
to Dr. Ng, ICW will continue to play a pro-active role together with KOHIJAU to
promote cleanliness through the KOHIJAU-ICYCLE Recycling Reward Point System.
Todate, 68 bins have been installed throughout Perak where 20 of them are
located within Kinta District. Over 60,000 kg of recyclables have been
collected since it started in September 2016 contributed by more than 6,000
members in Perak. This effort has saved the state government of RM18,000 which
will otherwise use to pay to contractors to transport the garbage to the
landfill. While ICW and KOHIJAU continue to educate the public, we urge Ipoh
City Council to step up enforcement to catch those responsible in throwing
their garbage indiscriminately and caused illegal dumping. We also urge the
City Council to improve its services by having routine pick up of any garbage
irrespective of its types. They must also deploy more workers to sweep the streets
in the city and gardens. Only by doing so, we could keep maintaining Ipoh as
one of the cleanest cities in Malaysia and attract tourists and investments
into the state.
