How silence fuels KL rubbish crisis

Rubbish piling up along a street in Jinjang, Kepong, as collection delays led to overflowing waste and foul smells in several areas across Kuala Lumpur. — Courtesy photo

LAST month, I joined 26 journalists from South Asia and South-East Asia at a two-day workshop in Bangkok, Thailand, titled “Combating disinformation and misinformation”.

It examined how false and misleading narratives in climate and health reporting reach the public.

One lesson from the workshop stayed with me: disinformation is not always about outright lies; more often it is about what is left unsaid.

I saw this play out during the first week of January, when Kuala Lumpur’s rubbish crisis hit.

The impact was immediate and public anger was mounting, but answers were hard to come by.

While reporting on the issue, what I encountered was not blatant disinformation or misinformation, but something just as damaging: silence.

When authorities say just enough to appear responsive, but not enough to take responsibility, the public is left guessing, forced to fill in the gaps and piece together half-truths.

Instead, information came from the sidelines.

I started receiving calls from waste contractors, lorry drivers hauling rubbish to landfill sites and Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) workers who were on the receiving end of anger on the ground.

The Solid Waste and Public Cleansing Management Corporation is the main agency involved, with oversight from the National Solid Waste Management Department.

The danger lies in this “curated” transparency – a tactic where officials release just enough information to pacify the public, yet not nearly enough to be held to account for the crisis.

The first signs did not come from official statements or press briefings; they came from residents.

Photos of overflowing bins. Missed collections. The smell that lingered in neighbourhoods across the city.

As conditions worsened, complaints poured in to the service centres of elected representatives, community leaders and DBKL hotlines, with authorities pressed for answers.

Yet, even as rubbish continued to pile up, there was still no clear public explanation of what had gone wrong.

Slowly, a picture emerged. There was a serious problem.

But the agencies responsible were not stepping forward to explain it.

Because this was happening in the capital at a time when Kuala Lumpur is gearing up for Visit Malaysia 2026, the issue could not be ignored for long.

It eventually took an intervention by Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Federal Territories) Hannah Yeoh, who asked KL mayor Datuk Seri Fadlun Mak Ujud to respond publicly.

Even when the mayor later said the matter had been resolved, there was still no clear explanation of what had gone wrong in the first place.

After visiting a waste transfer station and speaking to contractors, it became clear that the problem did not start in December.

It began weeks earlier, in mid-November, when several rubbish lorries were confiscated during a roadblock by the Road Transport Department.

That enforcement action disrupted waste transport, created a backlog at the transfer station and triggered a chain reaction that eventually spilled into neighbourhoods across the city.

In other words, this was not sudden.

The agencies involved had time to fix the problem, or at the very least, explain it.

A simple press statement would have helped. Tell the public what happened. Say what was being done. Ask for patience.

Even an apology would have gone a long way.

Instead, residents were kept in the dark, while those on the ground took the heat.

As a journalist, I found myself chasing multiple agencies repeatedly, sometimes several times in a single day, just to understand what was going on.

This is not how communication should work, especially for a government that often talks about transparency.

What troubled me more was the response when questions were asked.

Instead of addressing the issue, some agencies focused on the messenger.

I received calls asking who my sources were and where the information had come from.

Transparency is not about spinning a story.

It is about telling people the truth early and clearly, especially when things go wrong.

KL-ites were inconvenienced and deserve an explanation.

And frankly, they are owed an apology.