This afternoon, I decided to take my family for a lunch near Ayer Itam’s Reservoir Garden. As we drove into the main road- Ayer Itam Road, the road was packed with vehicles as Chinese people did their last rush for ‘Cheng Beng’ - a traditional practise to visit and clean the graves of the ancestors. It took me almost 30 minutes to go from Chung Ling High School to Reservoir Garden when at normal time, that 500m stretch would only take around 5 minutes. Luckily I got an auto transmission Getz, or else my left leg would have had cramps just to repeatedly step on the clutch of a manual car!

Rupa rupanye the culprit was the traffic lights in Ayer Itam - Boundary Rd juction. These traffic lights were not timed properly and as the result, it could not cater for the sudden surge in volume of vehicles coming thru it. I sincerely hope that our local municipal councillor will have a complete look again on our Penang’s traffic lights to determine their timings so that main roads in Penang such as Ayer Itam road will not suffer so much jams in future. Really stress u know… A glance at the long lines of the vehicles waiting to cross traffic lights really increase my blood pressure!

I dunno what time the jam starterd but only after a few minutes I reached Reservoir Garden, I was suprised to hear some whistle blowing sound at the junction of Reservoir Garden - Ayer Itam. You won’t believe what I saw. I almost din believe it either! Our policemen - the Men in Blue were busy directing traffic at the junction. Yes, not the Traffic police ‘Pek Kah Teh’… It’s the Men in Blue! For most Malaysians, these Men in Blue used to hide themselves up behind trees or behind buildings to catch traffic offenders.  But today, we realli got to give credit to these police officers for their initiatives to help out easing the traffic jam!

I still remember when I was young and whenever I used to pass Ayer Itam Balai in the midst of terrible n horrible traffic jam there, what I saw was these Men in Blue sitting comfortably in their air-cond office while never gonna give a damn to the cronic traffic jam around the Kek Lok Si Temple. I felt that a little effort by these Men in Blue would certainly be appreciated by all drivers and traffic flow around that area would definately be smoother. But sadly, seemed that when BN was in power, these Men in Blue got more privilege to ‘goyang kaki’ in their cool working condition.

Apart from these Men in Blue posted in strategic junctions, I also saw some RELAwan assisting these police officers in their task. This proved only ONE thing! The new State Government especially our Penang DAP chairman Mr. Chow Koon Yew who headed the State Local Government, Traffic Management and Environment Committee has his eyes and ears around Penang. They managed to act fast by deploying police officers and RELA to ease off traffic conjestions and I realli salute his effectiveness. Penangites have not seen such swift responses from our Government for a long long time liao. I hope all Penangites will be able to notice such positives from our new Government! I’m not actually ‘trumpeting’ the new DAP State Government but just would like to ‘highlight’ the real effort being made here.

Let’s hope that with these Real people who do Real job out there, Penang will have a better tomorrow!

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