Child councillors to ‘start work’ in January

Some of the children who took part in a workshop by MBPJ to get their input on city planning. — Filepic

PETALING Jaya City Council’s (MBPJ) plans to set up a child council will be realised by January next year.

Petaling Jaya mayor Datuk Mohd Sayuthi Bakar said 24 children would be appointed to participate in the first-of-its-kind council in the country.

He said the candidates would be identified after the launch of the Petaling Jaya Child-Friendly City Conference 2019, held from Monday to Friday.

“The purpose of setting up the child council is to get their opinion on how we can make Petaling Jaya a better city for them, ” he said after chairing the city council’s full board meeting yesterday.

He said children would be invited to share their views at the conference.

With this, MBPJ will implement an action plan following a Memorandum of Understanding signing with Unicef Malaysia.

Mohd Sayuthi said MBPJ aimed to become a child-friendly city and wanted to incorporate children’s views in city planning.

“Only 33 countries in the world are recognised for having child-friendly cities.

“We will be the 34th and the first local council in Malaysia to establish a child-friendly city.

“Although there is a time frame of three years to achieve the child-friendly city status, we are hoping to do it in one and a half years, ” said Mohd Sayuthi.

Earlier this month, StarMetro reported that MBPJ would select children aged seven to 17 as child councillors.

A series of workshops was organised by MBPJ recently for children to learn about their rights, on expressing their views and learning the city council’s functions.

Out of 50 children, 24 will be appointed as child councillors at the conference.

Meanwhile, Mohd Sayuthi said MBPJ allocated RM12.9mil to maintain the landscape of 38 areas next year.

These will include the maintenance of trees to provide shade, pruning of trees as well as cleaning and disposal of garden waste in public parks and open spaces.

To further improve the quality of maintenance services in public parks, Mohd Sayuthi said MBPJ had for the first time given a special allocation of RM4.2mil to focus on the maintenance of 15 public parks.

“This is a comprehensive method that is found to be more effective as it facilitates the monitoring of the work involved in all aspects of landscape maintenance in our jurisdiction, ” he added.