MORE and more public roads in many neighbourhoods throughout the Klang Valley are being barricaded to prevent the public from using them. This is ostensibly to prevent burglars or snatch thieves or whomever to move freely through a given neighbourhood.

I understand the concern of the citizens to protect themselves from this sometimes real – and sometimes imagined – threat. But vigilantism – the taking of the law into your own hands – is not the answer. If residents have no faith in the police’s capability to ensure their safety, this is an issue that must be worked out through political channels, not by hijacking public roads.

Public roads are there for anyone – anyone at all – to use. That’s why they are PUBLIC roads. Barricading or “privatising” these roads is illegal.

I wonder if the irony escapes most residents’ committees that by illegally blocking public roads to, somehow, stop law-breakers, they themselves become law-breakers. So either work through the proper channels to make the random barricading of our roads legal. Or stop doing it.

It would be like me commandeering a public bus and forcing everyone off except the few people I felt comfortable around, just because it made me feel safer, regardless of the public’s right to use the bus. Legal? Obviously not. So why should commandeering our roads and denying the public access to them be seen any differently?

The police, as usual, seem unsure of what the law is regarding this straightforward matter. Otherwise they would not allow it. But their attitude seems to be: “Hey, if this makes neighbourhoods feel safer, then, sure, block all the roads you want. I’m sure the public would understand. It’s for the greater good, after all.”

The greater good is actually that we Malaysians follow the law and do not take the law into our own hands. Because once you start ignoring some laws, it becomes a slippery slope to ignoring other laws …

If you want private roads, move to a private housing development. Otherwise, respect the right of the rakyat to use the public roads we pay for with our taxes.

If neighbourhood crime is the problem, barricading thousands of public roads throughout the Klang Valley is not the answer.

Law Abiding PR
Petaling Jaya

Source: The Sun – December 17, 2009