KUALA LUMPUR: Just five days ago, a boy was killed after being struck by a chair flung from 21st floor of Block 102 of Seri Pantai People's Housing Project (PPR) in Pantai Dalam.
While families mourned the loss of 15-year-old S. Sathiwaran, residents had gone back to their old habit of dumping garbage indiscriminately and throwing unwanted items from the upper floors of the apartment block.
Yadin, a 58-year-old stall operator said just yesterday, he had to pick up a plastic bag containing beer cans that was thrown from one of the upper floors.
"It is normal occurrence here. I see rubbish 'flying' down every day...from bottles and beer cans. Sometimes, people do throw heavy objects such as bricks.
"Items fell on cars and cracked the windshield. (But) Residents seemed to have accepted the situation as normal," he said.
Yadin added that scolding the perpetrators was a useless effort because they would react by throwing more rubbish.
"First of all, we do not know who to scold. You look up and there's no way you can see who committed the act.
"If you scolded them, a few seconds later, you'd see objects being thrown at you. And then, there's also the risk of having your vehicles vandalised," he said.
Another resident, who only wanted to be identified as Razif, 29, said something needed to be done to prevent another senseless tragedy like the ones on Monday.
He said a apart from residents' own lack of civic mindedness, the bad habit could also stemmed from the lack of facilities provided by the authorities.
"Each floor has no rubbish bin. Then the elevators often malfunctioned. Just imagine how residents, especially the senior citizens are going to throw the rubbish?
"Sometimes, they walk down to throw the rubbish at the disposal area on the ground floor but give up halfway and left the smelly items at the stairs instead," he said.
Razif added that on the upper floors, there were still many unwanted furniture being placed along the corridors, blocking part of the walkway.