KUALA LUMPUR, April 1- A coffee shop is usually a place for family gatherings, meeting of friends or engaging in political talk, gossip and many more but who would have thought, it has now been transformed into a loca community service centre in Seputeh, here.
Nicole Wong Siaw Ting, 33, special aide to the Seputeh Barisan Nasional chairman, has created an ‘out of the box’ concept in approaching the local community by choosing the morning market to operate her mobile service centre and setting up a special counter called ‘Nicole Wong Work Station’ in the area’s coffee shops.
Speaking with enthusiasm to Bernama when met recently, she said each morning since last year, she would be meeting the people at the market and coffee shops, taking notes and listening attentively to their problems or suggestions and then present these to the relevant authorities for action.
“In serving the ‘rakyat’ (people), my service centre which is also known as ‘Amoi Kopitiam’ was conceived with the purpose of understanding the people’s problems better and solving them more effectively compared through the conventional community service centre,” she said.
Although, she gave birth to her second child, a boy, only two weeks ago, she continues to work hard in serving the Seputeh community.
“I choose the coffee shop as the perfect location to interact with the people because from my observation, the local residents love having breakfast with family or friends at the coffee shop despite their busy schedule.
“Usually, the towkay (the coffee shop owner) will provide a space for us to operate the community service centre, otherwise, we will install a canopy under a tree near the foodtalls or morning market,” she said.
Wong, who is also the national MCA Beliawanis deputy chief, said apart from working mobile in serving people in the Seputeh area, she had a permanent workstation, a rented double-storey corner lot in Taman Gembira, Jalan Ramah,
near Jalan Klang Lama, which started operations in June, last year.
She will be at the Taman Gembira work station every Tuesday and Thursday from 11am to 8pm and on other days, she will be making her rounds meeting people in and around the Seputeh area.
“I am taking Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s call for transformation in the government and other sectors, especially in serving the people,” she said.
Wong can be reached at 017-3302088 or 010-2587688. The Seputeh parliamentary seat has been a DAP stronghold for seven terms since 1986 and is currently held by the party’s publicity secretary, Teresa Kok Suh Sim, who is also the Kinrara assemblyman since 1999. In the 2008 general election, Kok, retained her parliamentary seat by a massive majority of 36,492 votes, beating BN’s Carol Chew Chee Lin who polled 12,895 votes.
According to the Election Commission website, the Seputeh seat has 85,718 registered voters, gazetted since November 27, last year, with the Chinese comprising 89 per cent of the voters, Malays (5 per cent), Indians (4 per cent) and others (2 per cent). The Seputeh area consists of Overseas Union Garden, Taman Desa, Seri Petaling, Jalan Klang Lama, Salak Selatan and Kampung Baru Salak Selatan.
BERNAMA
