SHAH ALAM: KDEB Waste Management Sdn Bhd (KDEB) has announced plans to impose stricter rules and checks on all its subcontractors following recent controversy over having the highest number of unpaid Road Transport Department (JPJ) summonses.
KDEB Waste Management managing director Datuk Ramli Mohd Tahir explained that current agreements with subcontractors result in summonses issued to KDEB vehicle drivers, who are employed by subcontractors, being directed to KDEB itself.
Unlike most other states’ waste management services, KDEB owns all its 1,540 vehicles currently used by its subcontractors, as per a company mandate when it was established as a subsidiary of the Selangor government.
"We are responsible for any manufacturing defects on the vehicle, but maintenance to ensure road-worthiness and fixing wear-and-tear is the responsibility of the subcontractors as per our agreement with them.
"This, combined with poor communication about JPJ summonses between both the vehicle drivers and subcontractors, as well as between the subcontractors and KDEB, has resulted in many summonses going missing-in-action, leaving us in the dark.
"The plan now is to review existing clauses in our subcontractors' contracts to be more stringent with increased penalties while improving KDEB’s own monitoring operations," he said during a press conference on Thursday (June 26).
Ramli stated that changes could include increasing the frequency of KDEB’s checks on subcontractors for JPJ summonses from monthly to bi-weekly, as well as system improvements to better trace wrongdoings by subcontractors’ drivers.
He also mentioned that checks with the JPJ MySikap website found KDEB only had 14,343 active unpaid summonses.
Ramli added that KDEB had paid RM2,378,205 for 23,218 JPJ summonses since August 2015, which includes 1,237 summonses incurred in 2025 alone, valued at RM146,890, as of Wednesday (June 25).
This comes after Transport Minister Anthony Loke stated that KDEB was among the companies with the highest number of unpaid JPJ summonses for various traffic offences, reported to be 22,017, on Wednesday (June 25).
"We are now planning to meet with JPJ officials to resolve this 8,000 figure discrepancy," Ramli added.
