KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 4 — Fuming housewives and ruling party politicians are at war over a new ruling that bans laundry from being hung out from windows and on balconies of high-rise flats in the capital.
The ruling takes effect from Jan 1 and was announced by Prime Minister-designate Datuk Seri Najib Razak, a blue-blooded Anglophile who has an eye for finery, on Tuesday.
Najib said punishment for breaching the rules would be introduced later if persuasion fails. A City Hall spokesman said at present offenders usually would be fined from RM50 to RM150.
Najib, however, wants housewives to dry clothes in designated areas on the ground, inside their homes or use driers to be provided by developers of existing or future units.
He said the haphazard way of drying laundry was adversely affecting the country's image.
"We need to dry clothes [away] from public view," he told Bernama, the official news agency.
City Hall estimates nearly 65 per cent of the capital's 1.9 million people live in high-rises and most of them hang out their clothes from windows and on balconies. The situation is made worse by an additional 1 million foreign migrant workers who live in crammed one-room flats and also hang out their clothes to dry.
Tourists and better-off locals applaud the ban, but housewives are angry, saying the rule is a burden.
"We have to go up and down with our laundry and it is a burden," said Kamariah Busut, community head at the crammed high-rise Sri Sentosa flats south of the capital.
"This is just another one of the rules the bosses have thought up without consulting us," she said, adding a meeting would be held soon with opposition lawmakers to protest against the rule.
"These millionaires have many servants to do all their chores. They don't know how poor people live," she said.
"I cannot comply even if I want to," said Thamarai Soosaipillai, 69, another Sri Sentosa resident. "I am old and can't carry [much]. The lifts also break down frequently."
Opposition lawmaker Tian Chua said the rule should not be hastily enforced without proper consultation. — South China Morning Post
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