PM: Take ownership towards building safe neighbourhood

By Fauziah Ismail

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysians should take ownership towards building a safe neighbourhood, community and ultimately, a safer country. Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said while the government will continue to pursue excellence to ensure the safety of the people, “we have much to show for our efforts.”

“We all have a role to play in this,” he said in his 1Malaysia blog posting titled Preserving our safety by cutting crime and boosting PDRM performance.”

He noted that while Malaysians say that their most important political issue was the economy, the second was crime.

“News of crime features strongly in the media and is a natural concern for all decent citizens. That’s why one of our country’s achievements that we should be proud of is our ranking by the Global Peace Index which ranked Malaysia as the safest country in Southeast Asia.

There is never room for complacency in this area, though – there will always be a minority who selfishly break the rules of our society for their own gain,” he said.

He also outlined the Crime Busting National Key Result Area (NKRA) specific targets to reduce crime and improve the performance of the Royal Malaysian Police. The NKRA seeks to optimise resources and focus on certain common crimes.

Between 2006-2009, research showed that street crime was the main contributing factor to crime committed in Malaysia. A lot of the progress in reducing street crime is down to the expansion of the Omnipresence and Safe City Programmes, by hiring and deploying more personnel to the streets as well as upgrading and installing infrastructure.

In terms of personnel, there are over three million volunteers with RELA working around the clock to keep the cities safe. The police are also coming out to engage with local people and holding roundtables with the non-governmental organisations such as the Malaysia Crime Prevention Foundation.

The government has also equipped police stations and local authority hotspots with Safe City Monitoring Systems to keep an eye on crime. In the last year, over 8,000 enhanced lighting posts, 1300 safety mirrors and 100km of railings and curbs have been brought in nationwide.

As a result, there were significant drops in both street crime (39.7 per cent) and index crime (11.1 per cent), with over 8,000 confiscations and arrests made through various national operations. Of the total, 23 per cent of those arrests were brought to trial, over-achieving the NKRA on crime 2011 target. This has resulted in improved public perception on police performance and service overall.

“Nevertheless, the Government acknowledged the common belief that crime is still prevalent, and we endeavour to listen and attend to your concerns. It is our duty as the Government to also reduce the discrepancy between public perception on crime and the improving reality,” he added.

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PM: Take ownership towards building safe neighbourhood

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