|
As soon as I stepped into our office on the morning of Wednesday, August 9, 2006, the Project Manager for the Klang Valley Public Transportation Information System announced that disgruntled bus passengers in Penang were staging a peaceful demonstration on Friday, August 11, 2006. She’d just read about it in Penang’s grassroots activism website, www.penangwatch.net. Guess what, I was assigned to cover this event and build contacts with transit activists in and around Penang!
Before I reported for work the next morning, I went to KL Sentral to purchase a train ticket to Bukit Mertajam, and went straight to this futuristic railway station right after work on Thursday evening. Armed with a take-away dinner pack, I found my seat on the north-bound Langkawi Express.
 | | | | |
My friend, Rezal, who is based in Bukit Mertajam, fetched me from the nostalgic railway station in Bukit Mertajam. After a shower and a quick nap, a delicious albeit a little bit tiny breakfast awaited my consumption. Around 11 o’clock in the morning, we got onto Rezal’s Yamaha heavy bike; here we come, Penang!
The toll charge for motorcyclists using Touch ‘n Go stored value cards purchased from Penang Bridge’s office was given a 28 cents discount, paying just RM 2.12 instead of the usual RM 2.40. This grace, however minute, showed how much our almighty government took good care of its obedient citizens.
Anyway, we decided to cross the channel using Penang’s efficient ferry system, part of the state’s finest heritage, whose operator, Penang Port Sdn Bhd, recently applied to build and operate the island’s upcoming Monorail network!
We parked our bike within the grounds of a temple across the road from Kompleks Tun Abdul Razak, or Komtar, Penang’s tallest pride of the land. A crowd of protestors was already forming at its lobby. Before we crossed the busy street, I managed to catch a few shots of the protest. The leader of the crowd, who was shouting slogans, was none other than Penang’s homegrown social activist and elections monitor, Ong Boon Keong, with the latest feather in his cap being one of Penang’s more vocal bus user activists.
The theme for the protest today was “No second chance for rotten buses to oppress passengers!”, as printed handsomely on the main banner, while the minor banner read “Bus reform now!” That showed how dissatisfied the public transit users in Penang were, with absolutely no alternative in sight. Just like everywhere else outside Kuala Lumpur, the public bus system in Penang is terminally ill (not that KL’s is an angel either). The hardware, including the buses as well as the bus stops, is perhaps as old as many of the buildings around historical Georgetown. Even if they were younger, the lack of maintenance has accelerated their aging. No amount of botox can sufficiently give these buses a satisfactory facelift. Would anyone please do something?
After citing some reasons why the bus network should be revamped and the crony bus operators be replaced, BK Ong gave the hailer to various members of the public. Many grabbed the chance to speak up against this non-performing public transit system, and the following are some of their grievances.
- The buses are supposed to have passed Puspakom tests, Puspakom being the privatized computerized vehicle inspection company authorized by the government. However, most of these buses, if not all of them, just don’t look safe enough. Passengers are risking their life riding in these old rotten buses.
- Apart from that, the operators also fail to succumb to the government’s instruction on issuing tickets. Not only are many paying passengers not given tickets, they are charged differently, at the whim and fancy of the operators. Thus, many a time, passengers are charged different fares for the same journey. And this happens in the so called silicon island of Malaysia, mind you.
- Another popular complaint is that the buses do not follow the routes and schedules as stipulated by the government. Although the frequency for all routes is supposed to be 20 minutes, it is hardly maintained. Not only that, there are times when the driver plying a route chases away the passengers on board, because he wishes to make a U-turn and pick up passengers on the other side of the road waiting for buses going the opposite direction, because there are more passengers there, hence more money to be made.
- It is a common practice for these lawless bus operators to “lease” these routes to drivers. In these cases, the drivers who now share profit with the bus companies do not hesitate to drive dangerously and break all rules and regulations just to run a few more trips when the demand is there. On the other hand, when the passengers are few, they will instead stall at the bus stop and start moving only when the load is satisfactory. In fact, this scenario is not limited to Penang, with “pajak” or leased routes also being practiced in the Klang Valley.
- If the above-mentioned problems are not enough, not one, not two, but all the mini bus routes acting as feeder buses feeding the main routes have been decommissioned. Reason? They were unprofitable due to low ridership. Therefore, there’s no way for passengers living off the main roads to catch a bus to town unless they have a car and drive to the nearest bus stop. Brilliant isn’t it? Welcome to Penang!
 | | | | |
Several of the bus users cite the main reason for Penang’s transit network being in this state as basically the breakdown of management. They say that right now, there is little co-ordination between the state government and municipal council, who should know the ins and outs of the cities, with the Commercial Vehicle Licensing Board (CVLB) which administers the public transit system. Very little of the advisory role the state government is meant to play is accomplished.
According to some of these bus users, the state government of Penang probably had an inkling that the revamp which was launched on April 1, 2006 was doomed to fail, thus paving the way for transferring the control of the bus network to the state government. In fact, the state government of Penang has proposed yet another revamp. Yet, claim these users, the state government might likely just get a federal grant to procure new buses, then, lease them back to the non-performing crony operators.
Whether this will then result in improved services is then anyone’s guess, although the disgruntled Penangites don’t seem to think so. They have had enough. According to them, they did not wish to be taken for another ride by bus operators motivated by nothing but greed.
In any case, it would seem that the lack of transparency on the decision making process takes the passengers hostage on several counts. Those who may be able to perform don’t seem to be engaged, while those who have proved to not have been performing are maintained, thanks to their “know who”.
It would seem that Penangites are in dire need of another revamp, a total revamp, not only of the bus routes, but of the system of administration as well. Otherwise, the state’s transport network would be heading nowhere but failure, just it has with the old bus companies in Kuala Lumpur, i.e. Len Bus, Ho Hup, Sri Jaya, Toong Foong, Intrakota, Cityliner, you name it. 
|
