This is the fourth article on how Malaysia can leapfrog in its holistic development and advancement. The focus is on practicality.
Innovative Public Governance will enable Malaysia to leapfrog on its holistic development and economic advancement, thereby saving time, money and resources.
Since it is a new concept, Malaysia needs to build its confidence by implementing simple concepts which can bring fast results.
One of the biggest problems faced by Malaysia is its alarmingly high traffic accident rates. According to the Royal Malaysian Police (PDRM) statistics, 402,626 road accidents were recorded in Malaysia from Jan-Sept 2022, with 4,378 fatalities.
Emojis to Cut Road Accidents
What’s the difference between an emoticon and an emoji?
If you come across a smiley face, for example :) that contains a character you can find on your computer keyboard, it's an emoticon. If it's a little cartoon figure that is free from the binds of punctuation, numbers, and letters, it's an emoji, for example😊.
The risk of motor vehicle crashes is higher among teens ages 16–19 than among any other age group. Teen drivers in this age group have a fatal crash rate almost three times as high as drivers ages 20 and older per mile driven. So clearly, we have to focus on this group.
A police chief, in a small town in the UK, after pondering over the problem of teenage drivers had a brainwave. It was very popular, even now for teenagers to use emojis in their phone messaging phone sms (short messaging service) to convey approval😊 or disapproval 🙁.
The area has already existing vehicle speed monitoring, telling motorists whether they were below or above the speed limit.
The police chief decided to conduct an experiment. For those travelling below the speed limit, a green smiley was shown. For those exceeding the speed limit an angry red frownie was displaced. The fatality rate was cut by 70%!
This system involves no new regulations, no need for monitoring and no extra police Best of all, it is easy to implement, requiring only a low budget.
Perhaps, instead of a red frownie, a frightening pontianak image could be used instead!
A few accident-prone roads could be selected for testing and evaluation of this project.
Big Items Littering
Another major problem for Malaysia is the unsightly littering of discarded old furniture, fridges, fans and other big household items.
These items are indiscriminately dumped wherever three are nearby empty spaces, sometimes breeding mosquitoes and at other times causing a danger to younger children.
The city of Sydney in Australia has solved this problem.
A day in every month is dedicated to removing these big item waste. All that the residents need to do is to throw out their unwanted items in front of the houses or apartments. The municipal councils would then send out a huge truck to collect them at the specified date.
This could be implemented in Malaysia with an additional improvement. The local authorities could work with charitable organisations to repair and recycle these discarded items for donation to charity. Alternatively, they could work with recycling organisations such as Montford Boys Town to recycle them for sale.
This is a very simple way to get rid of big and unwanted household items.
Forming CATS Teams
In Mauritius CAT (Civil Action Teams) are formed from groups of secondary students.
These students are trained to spot problems in their neighbourhood and report to the relevant authorities so that these problems get quickly resolved.
Problems such as potholes, non-functioning traffic lights, fallen electric street lights, and other situations that needed to be fixed.
In this way, the authorities cultivated the civic consciousness of the students. Problems are quickly identified and fixed.
In Japan, even pre-school and primary school students have to maintain their school surroundings.
They have to sweep the floors, clean the toilets, take care of the gardens and a host of other duties. If you watch the World Cup. You could see the Japanese spectators cleaning the section of the stadium where they sit!
Conclusion
The above examples are easy to implement with significant impact on our society. These would gear our Malaysian people and our authorities to take more proactive actions in resolving our daily problems. They would be groomed for greater responsibilities in resolving their problems.
Please email the author at mindwrite@outlook.com, if you have come across any other issues from other countries which have been innovatively resolved.
Freelance Writer Yew Kam Keong (Dr.YKK) is a former government official with over 24 years of service. He is a professional writer and speaker. Besides this, his passion is on creativity and innovation. He has been acknowledged as a Distinguished Talent on Creativity and Innovation by the Australian Government and a former international creativity adviser to Lego. Dr.YKK is a member of AWAI (American Writers and Artists Inc.) and currently practising as a copywriter. He is also a bestselling author and his book: “You Are Creative-Let Your Creativity Bloom” is now in its 7th Edition and published in 7 languages. You may contact him at mindwrite@outlook.com
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