STATE exco member for Local Government, Housing and Town & Country Planning Jagdeep Singh at a press conference on Aug 26 outlined his plans on the upgrading as well as the rating of public facilities such as public markets and food complexes.
“I had a meeting with the local government officials where I had directed the local councils – MBPP and MPSP – to come up with an action plan on two matters. One is the cleanliness aspect of all public markets and food complexes.
“We need to monitor their cleanliness and to monitor that these facilities need to be upgraded. As we all know, for the previous two terms, the state government had given priority to upgrade public facilities especially markets. As you are aware, most of the bigger markets have already undergone major renovations like Chowrasta market and the ones in Jelutong and Air Itam.
“We want an action plan and I have given a timeline and that’s two weeks. I don’t want to waste time. Within two weeks, the list of all public markets and all food complexes must be ready. So, they (MBPP and MPSP) need to come up with a list on the position of all these public markets in terms of cleanliness.
“For your information, in terms of cleanliness, we have A, B and C grading. So for all our public facilities such as public markets and food complexes, I don’t want anymore C grading. It must be at least B, if not A. When I get the list in two weeks’ time, the next step is to get a timeline on when we are going to achieve that level of cleanliness.
“MPSP told me it wants to achieve this next year. The other important thing is renovation. When we get the list, we will know what are the works required for all the public markets and food complexes,” he said.
Story by Victor Seow
Pix by Alissala Thian