Pay for Services?

There was someone who wrote either in Brudirect or somewhere that I read over the last few days about the need to clean up the housing estates and to charge people for the clean up. At the moment, the Housing Development Department is responsible for the common areas of the housing estates. There is also no charges for the work. Getting people to pay is always one of the biggest issues in providing government agency. Everyone is used to not paying. But where necessary people will pay. The toll charges at Rasau are the cases in point. But then there are also complaints about the Municipal new road parking coupons.

I was reading Jewelle Tan's old blog entry on the national day celebrations. She mentioned the $20 her father donated towards building the National Stadium. When I wrote my Golden Legacy article for Brunei Times in October last year, I was quite surprised to find out that we Bruneians actually contributed towards the building of that stadium. The stadium completed in 1983 was partly contributed by the public. Here is an excerpt of that article:

"... The construction of the stadium, then considered the most modern in the region was one of the most memorable events for the people of Brunei Darussalam.

Everyone was excited about having a national stadium that a fund was set up to allow Bruneians to contribute towards the cost of building the stadium.

Unusually for a public building in Brunei Darussalam, members of the public donated and contributed towards the building of the stadium. Although the final collection of $1,102,761.57 accounted for a little more than 1.1 per cent of the total building cost ($100 million), the public participation showed the Bruneians’ great interest and support for this project ..."

We can and have paid for this kind of project in the past. Maybe we should encourage this in the future.