Another Attempted Robbery on SS22/35

I would like to share this with you and alert all in our neighbourhood

At 7.40pm on Friday 24 Oct 08 as I got out of my car in front my house in SS 22/35 two Malay/Indonesian guys in a motorcycle rode past me and suddenly the pillion rider in a faded pink T-shirt jumped out of the motorcycle and dashed towards me carrying a knife.

I threw my handbag away and he grabbed it and they sped off towards the field. All was over in less than one minute!

I hope we can speed up the boomgate before someone else falls prey.

Thks.

Sally

Security Update (25 October 2008)

Dear All,

I have more good news to share. We've had a number of security meetings with DJROA committee headed by Mr Yew to thrash out all the nitty gritty details of our arrangement and also with the security company of choice, Sri Lara Joint Security Services Sdn Bhd (a.k.a. Homeguards).

Here's the deal:

• DJROA will be signing a master contract with them to provide security services to 3 zones of DJ for a start. Our zone will be called zone B.
• You the residents will sign an individual contract with Homeguards. They will be going around to recruit each of the households. So please give them your corporation. There will be a form for you to fill and sign. I will also use that form to show to MBPJ that we've got the 85% supporters so please help to fill it up and sign it.
• They will collect RM50/mth for the fees from each of you. And it will be on quarterly basis. So each of you will have to pay RM150 every 3 months. Please make checks payable to "Sri Lara Joint Security Services Sdn Bhd".
• The bulk of the RM50 will go towards paying for their guards services. A small portion of that will be for our zone's development cost, i.e. to build the guardhouse, boomgates, CCTV, etc. The portion will vary depending on the number of household joining us. If less households joins us, then there will be less money for development. Only once we have collected sufficient funds for development then only will we be able to build the said items. As you can see money will be very tight. But we hope to be able to manage within it. If not I will come back to you to ask for more. As we had assured all we want to keep the cost to as low as possible and this RM50/mth is the bear minimum for now.
• Our targeted date to start the security is 1st December 2008. If we can collect sufficient funds earlier and if the guards are available, we may start off even earlier. But 1st Dec will be the latest date to start.
• We plan to start with 9 guards on 3 shifts x 8 hour per shift, i.e. 1 guard each per entrance and 1 guard to patrol. Once we have collected sufficient funds, we will hire more guards. Our optimum is 15 guards, i.e. 2 guards per entrance and 1 guard on patrol i.e. 5 guards on duty per 8 hour shift. We will slowly build towards that number depending on how many supporters we have paying up.
• All guards are local. Home guards will provide a manager as head of security who will be the main point of contact for all residents. He will be based at DJROA center daily on 8 hour shifts to manage all the guards and also to liaise with the residents on issues pertaining to security. Each shift will have a supervisor who will be in charge of the guards. That supervisor will also be going around to collect the payments from you 1 month before it is due. Please make it a habit to pay him just like how you've been paying the newspaper man every month.
• We will be provided with 3 emergency contact numbers. First line of contact in case of emergency is a dedicated mobile number of the supervisor on duty who will be able to response the fastest as they are on site. The second number is the emergency Call Center number. And the third number is the Manager's mobile number. All these emergency numbers will be displayed at the guard house.
• Once you sign up, a small plate will be displayed on your gate. So this way we will know who are supporters and who are not. I hope to see that plate on ALL the gates of this neighborhood.
• We will also be making car stickers for the supporters of our zone. It will be similar to the other zones differentiated by color. How much it will cost you we are still working that out and will inform shortly.
• To make our neighborhood more secure we will close up the small road SS22/33 leading to SS22/48 with a boomgate. It can be open during emergencies. The guards will have the keys to the padlock. We will also close up the two small back lanes, i.e. between roads SS22/29 and from the LDP leading to SS22/32.
• We are organizing a meeting for all of you to meet the management of Homeguards this 1st November, i.e. next Saturday at the field on Jalan SS22/31 from 10.00am to 12.00noon. All the details will be available at this meeting.
• I will be there with my sub-committee so you can come and give us feedback. We have also invited the head of police for Damansara Jaya Mr Thomas and the MP of our area Mr Tony Pua to be there. If they show up you can ask them whatever questions you want. Mr Yew Cheng Hoe, Chairman of DJROA will also be there to show support. So please bring along your check book as we will start the recruitment drive on that day. We will ask you to fill up and sign the form on the spot.
• We are reviewing the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) with them right now and will circulate it once we have confirmed it. That will contain all the rules and regulations, do's and don't that will govern the guards and also the inconveniences that we can expect.
  Remember, if it inconveniences us, it will also inconvenient the would be robbers, car jackers, snatch thieves, etc and hopefully they will leave our neighborhood alone. So please be there on 1st November to ask all the questions you want.
• And for those who had pledge monetary support for this scheme, we will be requiring you to issue a check for your pledge amount to "DJROA". Two of you had approached me to say they want to keep their identity confidential and asked to pay to me directly. While I will not encourage it, but if you trust me with your money I will collect it from you and pass it on to DJROA on your behalf. Just let me know. Thanks very much for your contribution. It will certainly help to build up the development fund.
• As this scheme is supported by DJROA, I encourage all of you to sign up as DJROA members too. It only cost RM20/year or RM80 for lifetime membership. DJROA is a non profit association and survives on the membership fees and contributions of the residents. The main thing you get out of joining DJROA as a member is this security scheme that they have helped set up for all of us. Another benefit is the use of the clubhouse facility. The main purpose of DJROA is to foster friendship among the residents. They organize various events for you where you can get to know your neighbors. In the pipeline which Mr Lim Ann Liang and I are involve in as DJROA EXCO committee is the annual dinner and golf tournament (I'm the organizer!), both to be held in March 2009. The membership forms will be there on 1st November. I have now joined as a lifetime member. To join is voluntary, so I encourage you to join to show your support for your neighborhood association.

Attached is the circular that we will be dropping into your mail boxes. It is for those that I can't reach via email. We will also drop it off into all the non supporters/detractors mail boxes. So I am expecting a few of them to show up on 1st November probably to protest what we are doing. If you are there, I hope that more of you can also help us talk to them that this security scheme is a good thing for all the people living in this neighborhood, the inconveniences is for our safety and the small price to pay is worth it. Some of the detractors we had met had been quite adamant against this and some were quite rude to us about it. We met all kinds but we still persevered. Thank goodness the majority of you are supporters and have given us the moral support to get to where we are today. We truly appreciate all your kind words and support.

I must thank you all of for having the patience to stay with us and believing in us that we can get this done. It has been a very long road (4 months) with unbelievable number of obstacles. We've got a great bunch of people in our sub committee working tirelessly and dedicating their time to helping see this security scheme to success. I must thank all of them for their efforts. The only thing thing we get out of this is to see our neighborhood a safer place to live in for all of us.

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish all our Hindu friends a very Happy Deepavali! May the light shine bright for us and show us a way out of this economic mess that this world is in.

All the very best.

Security Update (10 Oct 2008)

Dear All,

There's been some positive progress since my last email circular to all. It's now coming together and we can actually see the light at the end of the tunnel. We had another meeting last night with the DJROA committee and am happy to report the following:

Firstly, Mr Yew Cheng Hoe has returned as Chairman of DJROA after much cajoling by the committee and the residents. Ms Tai (Secretary) and Mr Bernard (Treasurer) too have withdrawn their resignation and are back on the committee.

In addition, both Mr Lim Ann Liang and myself have been co opted into DJROA's EXCO committee. So we will now be your voice on issues related to our neighborhood. We hope to be able to help make this neighborhood a better and safer place for all of us to live in.

Mr Yew have come up with a new proposal, i.e. to use another security firm called Sri Lara Joint Security Services S/B a.k.a. Homeguards. Their credentials includes managing security services for housing projects in TTDI, Bukit Bandaraya, Kelana Jaya, Taman Mayang and Dataran Prima. Mr Yew is proposing to use one firm for the whole of DJ, if possible. The economies of scale will bring the cost down.

The advantage of this Homeguards is that they will undertake to collect the payments for the security services directly from all of you the residents. They will have a "marketing team" to go around to promote and sign up the residents into the scheme. They will provide security guards 24/7 stationed at the key entry/exit points as per our earlier proposal. With this scheme, it in a way solves the problem of DJROA having to manage a huge amount of money collected from the residents for the security services which has been the stumbling block all along.

DJROA have also agreed to open a separate bank account for our zone which is what we've been pushing for all the while. We will manage the funds collected from all of you for our section of the neighborhood's security use. What that means is that you will be required to make 2 payments, one to the security firm for the guards services and the second payment to DJROA for the infrastructure cost (DJROA membership, boomgates, guardhouse, etc) which will be managed by us, the zone's sub committee to DJROA. Exactly how much to be paid we will need to work it out and will get back to you. It is in all our interest to keep cost low.

Next steps is we are meeting up with Homeguards this Saturday at 4.00pm for further discussion on the services that they can offer to us. We will negotiate the best possible deal. We will get them to give us a final proposal which I will share with all of you. We will also work out the estimated infrastructure cost and will let you know how much to pay to DJROA. We hope to have at least the security guards running around by November. Boomgates and guard houses will follow.

So it looks like there will be a happy ending soon. I'm very happy that DJROA is playing an active role in helping to solve the security issues of our neighborhood and for the whole of DJ. Kudus to them.

Looks like some major hurdles have been resolved. Please continue to have patience. We are all hoping to get this moving ASAP. I look forward to positive support from all of you soon.

Thank you.