bling bling KL

KL was once known as the city of lights. Now it’s best to associate the national capital as a ‘bling bling’ city.
This is not a sling shot to the posers at Bangsar who communicate with their posses akin to the blacks in the USA. This is refereed to our Mr Mayor who has shown us good reasons not to pay our assessment, City Hall bills or even minor traffic summons issued by them. He has proven KL City Hall is rich!
It has been reported a total of RM94,000 was spent on a grooming and etiquette programme catered for the top brass of the KL City Hall. (One wonders if they utilise such skills in the first place). Shockingly, Mayor Datuk Ruslin Hassan has defended the purchase of tuxedos worth RM2,500 for each of the senior officers, citing it is proper for them to dress when attending social functions.
This must be Ruslin’s biggest blunder since being appointed as the seventh Datuk Bandar in 2003 replacing Datuk Mohmad Shaid Mohd Taufek who was surprisingly given the boot at the eleventh hour by then Federal Territories Minister Tan Sri Isa Samad.
Shaid Mohd Taufek was told to leave in a very hasty manner as word on the street claims he has stepped on many toes. When Ruslin took over, many projects came to a stall, giving the impression KL City Hall were in no position to carry out much of the works.
The same money could be used to re-start the construction of the 90% built market and sports complex in Bandar Baru Sentul. Instead money is spent on building and rebuilding pathways, expensive street lights and constructing playgrounds at an area which is waiting to undergo a major makeover (2 years ago, several playgrounds were constructed around the Tunku Abdul Rahman flats aka Pekeliling Flats. Today, its just bare land). Even better, City Hall officials suffered an embarrasing moment a couple of months back when a lawyer equipped with a warrant started sealing of the building as they failed to pay a certain sum of money to a 2 year old child who suffered a cracked skull after failing down from a flight of stairs in a DBKL flat.
However, the ‘Corporate Grooming and Social Etiquette’ course paints a different picture. There is no harm in organising such a course if City Hall feels the need to do so, but spending RM94,000 of tax payers money? Now that’s another issue altogether. Heck, even married couples don’t spend so much on their weddings and this course is to groom officials for social functions? Social functions ought to be borne out of personal expense and not on the rakyat’s money. If Pak Lah can wear batik for social and official functions, why can’t they? I guess the people in City Hall are too westernised huh, but then again they are the same people who would jump on the White men with regards to religious and social issues. This is hypocrisy to the maximum!
It will be unfair to target City Hall alone. Even at the grassroots, at schools level, such an attitude is practised. The KL Schools Sports Council for one is known to have adopted such a culture. While there are several schools in KL without proper sporting equipments, the KL Schools Sports Council are famous for the ‘budget tabling’ trips outside KL, spending days in resorts to discuss something which can be tabled within three hours at the most. And it’s the money your children pay in their school fees (note the column where it’s written JPWP).
Maybe City Hall could restructure their pay scale so that their roaming officers will not take bribes most of them time (a stall near a law college in Petaling Street has been one of the spots for such officers to get their daily dosages of RM50). Or maybe if they have not spent this year's budget fully, they could very well channel it to the coming year and ensure better facilities for the city dwellers.
I used to dismiss people who wouldn’t pay their taxes and couldn’t be bothered about paying up summons issued by City Hall. Now I understand why they do so. Guess KL City Hall is rich after all. So as a true Bangsar-ian would say, “Wassup Ruslin my bling bling bro, I aint paying u no shit no more!”

-The Man Who Sold The World-