Modern security barriers risk destroying community spirit that once united residents
I SPENT 13 of my growing-up years in Bandar Tun Razak, Jengka in Maran, Pahang.
It was then a small, kampung-like township, though much has since changed.
One memory that remains vivid is the Rukun Tetangga patrols.
Rukun Tetangga was still new in our town, introduced nationally in 1975 as a neighbourhood security scheme that required residents aged 18 to 55 to take turns patrolling.
But it was an incident of a different kind that gave the patrols their life – the fear of the “Orang Minyak”.
This black, oil-covered figure said to prowl at night and prey on women was already established in Malay folklore, first reported in local newspapers in the 1950s and popularised by films.
Rumours of sightings resurfaced periodically and reached Jengka too.
I cannot say whether anyone there actually encountered the creature, or whether the tale simply grew with every retelling.
To a child, it hardly mattered. The fear was real enough, and it was this fear that pushed the patrols into motion.
Every household sent a representative. Residents took shifts, walking from house to house through the night and early morning, armed with torchlights and watching the streets while checking on homes and looking out for each other.
There were no boom gates, facial-recognition cameras or access cards, and no arguments over who had paid.
It was simply neighbours watching over neighbours.
In 1983, Rukun Tetangga shifted its emphasis from security to neighbourliness and unity, later expanding into community development.
By 2024, there were more than 8,400 neighbourhoods with the scheme nationwide.
That history came back to me when reporting on the guarded-neighbourhood dispute in Taman Desa, Kuala Lumpur, which sparked protests over blocked roads, park access and conditions imposed on motorists.
It raised a deeper question – who gets to decide how a neighbourhood is run?
A few years ago, I was in an e-hailing ride heading to a public park in Jalan Rumpai, Bangsar, when a guard stopped us at the boom gate.
He did not allow the car entry and told me to get out and walk. I refused.
“If you make me walk from here, will you provide security until I reach the park?” I asked.
He said no and then let the car through.
At another guarded neighbourhood nearby, I was asked to have my identity card scanned into a device.
Again, I refused. Why surrender personal information to use a public road? Who would store it and for how long?
With scams and identity theft rampant, people should not have to hand over their information just because someone installed a guardhouse.
Such measures are not merely inconvenient, they border on intrusion.
Residents associations are springing up across Kuala Lumpur to introduce security schemes.
Some neighbourhoods even have rival associations, each claiming to represent the residents.
Crime fears are real, and private guards often fill a gap left by the authorities.
However, there is a difference between protecting a neighbourhood and controlling it.
A boom gate cannot turn a public road into a private driveway; nor can technology create neighbourliness.
The old patrols required residents to walk from house to house, meet one another and build friendships.
Today, people may pay towards a guarded scheme without knowing who lives a few doors away.
Some paying residents have little say when a select few introduce new rules affecting all.
I will be honest: it took me a long time to get to know my own neighbours. That is precisely what must change.
Security should encourage participation, not reduce residents to subscribers whose only role is to contribute money.
We need not recreate the patrols of my childhood, but we can restore its underlying principle – participation rather than exclusion.
Strengthen Rukun Tetangga. Revive voluntary patrols where communities want them. Hold gotong-royong events to bring people together.
Let residents associations represent residents, rather than build small fortresses within the city.
The “Orang Minyak” belonged to rumour, folklore and shadow, yet the fear of it brought people into the streets together.
Today, security fears have produced higher gates, smarter cameras and more barriers.
But if neighbours are fighting neighbours, can we honestly call the neighbourhood more secure?
Perhaps the greatest thing slipping through our fingers is not security, but the neighbourly spirit that once made us feel secure.
