Story by Chan Lilian
Pix by Law Suun Ting
PUBLIC phone booths in deplorable condition have received the attention and concern of Air Itam assemblymember Wong Hon Wai and his team. They took a month to audit most of the public phone booths in the Air Itam constituency and found almost 40 phone booths in dire straits.
“This audit is something that was never done before. Even the Auditor-General has not carried such an audit. I urge Telekom, which I believe is the service provider, to remove those booths that are no longer functioning and which pose a danger to the public. Some have sharp, rusting parts, some are mosquitoes breeding grounds and some are in danger of toppling over,” Wong said.
He provided a set of over 30 photos which were taken at various locations around Air Itam.
“Imagine one constituency already has nearly 40 such booths. This means there must be at least over a thousand such booths in such deplorable condition in the whole of Penang because we have 40 constituencies,” he added.
He took members of the press to Air Itam for the press conference on Aug 6 to view some of the booths.
“I am writing to Telekom and at the same time, also ask the local council regarding their monitoring mechanism for these damaged public facilities,” Wong said.
Wong revealed that his next project is to check on the CCTVs in public areas and see if they are functioning as he has noticed many of them appear to be no longer functioning.