Selangor Blueprint 2011-2013

The Pakatan Rakyat led Selangor State Government has shown that it means serious business in fulfilling its duties to the community. The state government via its Economic Planning Unit has embarked on a bottoms-up approach to identify core issues and to make recommendations in a 3 year plan called the Selangor Blueprint 2011-2013.

The term bottoms-up approach means that the plan will be created from comments and feedback received from the public. The first part of the plan was to initiate a round table discussion with community leaders, state and federal related agency officers at the district level and NGOs. There are 12 Local Authority Areas/Councils in Selangor and 1 session was held at each place. Each Local Authority Area/Councils were responsible for the logistics of the session and lowest turnout was 80 participants whereas the highest was 170 participants. At each session after opening speech by the council president and a briefing of the session purpose, the participants were segregated into different tables with 8-10 participants per table joined by 1 moderator and 1 rapporteur. The session moderators and rapporteurs were from Merdeka Center for Opinion Research. Their job was only to moderate the discussion and take down all ideas and recommendations.

There were three themes given for discussion with each being allocated 40-45 minutes. The themes were (1) Infrastructure, Physical Development and Economic Policy, (2) Good Governance and Transparency, and (3) Social and Community Development. Discussion topics were same for all three themes, i.e., (1) issues that needed action within short term (6 months) and mid term (2 years); (2) core areas where the state government has to cooperate with federal agencies; and (3) positive and negative impacts from policies/actions taken by the state government since 2008.

Response to the sessions were fantastic and all inputs, issues highlighted and recommendations forwarded was compiled and will be given to the State Economic Planning Unit for analysis.

Additionally, discussions with industry associations, commercial associations, youth associations will be held separately. All findings will be analysed and a draft plan will be presented in October 2010. The plan will be tabled in the state senate on November 2010 and will be released in December 2010. 

I hope that the plan does not exist only as a lofty theoretical volume as most plans end up, but that the implementation of the economic blueprint do benefit the community of Selangor. How far this plan can improve the socio-economic condition of Selangor's community will determine Pakatan Rakyat's future in Selangor.

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