Story full of Pot-holes

In yesterday’s New Sunday Times, there was a photo and a story about the many pot-holes in Johor Baru’s roads.

The reason given for the delay in repairing the many pot-holes was reported as “it’s the rainy season now, we have to wait for the weather to improve.”

This is the type of attitude we have with city officials who do not care about the dangers the pot-holes pose to motorists especially the motor cyclists who can get killed ( we had a case last year) but it seems the people at City Hall just can’t be bothered.

It appears that the crony contractors for road maintenance are simply not capable of ensuring that we enjoy something as basic as a well-maintained road. Just take a ten kilometre drive around JB city areas and you will discover at least 10 locations where the road is full of pot-holes.

Even the main road turning into JB after leaving the Causeway was repaired at least thrice during the past three months but is still not satisfactory.

Sometimes it is bewildering to see the motley crew that carries out the pot-hole repair – they come with a pick-up and some shovels and hope to do a proper repair without compacting equipment. Maybe they are being paid for the number of times they are called out?

But why is the reason full of pot-holes? Well during the week-end they were reconstructing the whole road after the Causeway exit. I guess they wanted to impress the VVIPs from Singapore coming over for the royal wedding.

I am sure they do have pot-holes somewhere in Singapore but so far I have come across none in my years of driving there.

photo:http://www.parish-without-borders.net/cditt/cambodia/dailylife/2003/potholes.jpg