The next big thing that most Malaysians are waiting for is the national budget 2019, and the government has opened to the people to send in their suggestions before it is tabled on Friday, Nov 2 2018.

There have been some interesting budget suggestions under the various categories, including the Housing, Infrastructure and Public Safety category. We will take a look at some of the highlights below for that category.

Most of the current budget suggestion highlights can be divided into several segments — traffic, home safety, and the quality of homes.

An individual suggested that the government should put in efforts to ease traffic jams by identifying roads with traffic congestions. Then, the authorities can take appropriate actions to mitigate traffic build-up, such as widening the road, opening more lanes and flyovers or also the improvement of traffic light management at junctions.

We felt that the most interesting suggestion involved the installation of CCTV for monitoring the road condition, or something that would require more active control of the roads, rather than relying on public complaints. Another traffic-related suggestion is to improve our public transportation access.

An individual by the name of Ariff suggested that the government set-up public transportation planning and enforcement agencies in the primary and secondary cities of the country.

Ariff went on to explain that public transportation and proper sidewalks are very important, especially for those without access to private vehicles, including children and senior citizens. He further added that it could help reduce living costs and CO2 emissions, thereby increasing the quality of life in the cities.

Another aspect being addressed is the quality of homes. One such suggestion was to open up more developments with China and other international companies to compete with Rehda (Real Estate and Housing Developers’ Association Malaysia) to build better and more affordable housing for the people.

About the safety of homes and more, one individual suggested that CCTV linked to police stations should be installed on the primary streets where businesses operate, especially in high-density areas.

Another suggestion was to reduce the “cukai pintu” for guarded residential areas. The reasoning behind the idea was that homeowners have to pay a security fee to help reduce crime rates in housing estates, thereby helping the government. Further on, some sort of reward should be done to reduce the cost of living.