Try extending the awning of your legitimate commercial shoplot in Kuala Lumpur by a mere two feet. Even if the extension remains entirely within your premises, Kuala Lumpur City Hall responds swiftly with inspection notices, fines and demolition warnings.
For legitimate business owners paying exorbitant commercial rents and municipal assessment taxes, building codes are ironclad.
Yet walk past almost any low-cost flat or People’s Housing Project (PPR) in the capital, and a starkly different reality unfolds. Makeshift wooden huts, zinc-roofed sheds and heavy concrete warungs sprawl along strata boundaries, capturing prime commuter traffic without paying a cent in commercial overheads.
This is Kuala Lumpur’s enforcement paradox: zero tolerance for the tax-paying shopowner, but near-total impunity for the undocumented roadside hawker.
For years, this double standard has persisted through a jurisdictional sleight of hand. When confronted with public complaints, hawkers operating along boundary lines produce an “approval letter” from the local Joint Management Body (JMB) or Residents’ Association.
City Hall frequently turns a blind eye, claiming a lack of jurisdiction because the rear of a stall sits inches inside a strata fence line.
Legally, this amounts to bureaucratic cowardice. Under the Strata Management Act 2013, a JMB’s statutory duty is confined to maintaining common property for residents. It has no legal authority to lease boundary edges for commercial structures. Similarly, Residents’ Associations have no jurisdiction over land management. Any “approval letter” they issue is void.
More importantly, the Street, Drainage and Building Act 1974 applies to everyone. It expressly prohibits the erection of permanent or semi-permanent structures without architect-certified plans, regardless of whether they stand over a municipal drain or just inside a flat’s perimeter fence.
Yet even when shack-like stalls encroach squarely onto municipal public land, City Hall routinely gives them a free pass.
Why does this paralysis persist? In the past, roadside traders were protected by political power brokers with strong “cables” who could shield them from enforcement with a single phone call. While that era of overt political patronage may be fading, an equally paralysing shield has emerged: the viral video.
Today, the moment City Hall officers arrive to dismantle an illegal structure, smartphones come out. A 30-second, out-of-context clip is uploaded, invariably portraying municipal officers as heartless thugs destroying B40 livelihoods.
Fearing a backlash, City Hall frequently backs down, halting operations and handing the issue over to public relations officers for damage control while the illegal structure remains standing.
But City Hall is not a public relations agency. It is a statutory institution governed by law. When ratepayers lodge legitimate complaints about the loss of public space and civic health hazards, the city is obliged to act. Enforcement cannot be dictated by the fear of a viral TikTok video.
During my tenure as an advisory board member of Kuala Lumpur City Hall from 2023 to 2025, I served as a watchdog to the mayor. I witnessed first-hand how policy intentions could be derailed by hesitation on the ground.
Today, however, we have an assertive, proactive mayor and minister who have been vocal about protecting environmental integrity. It is time to channel that same resolve into enforcing the law on our streets.
We must not forget Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim’s core aspiration: to improve hawkers’ welfare in an orderly manner befitting a modern metropolis.
Through the Lestari Niaga programme, backed by a RM200 million City Hall allocation, the government is rejuvenating 287 hawker centres across the city.
But we must be clear-eyed. These legal hawker centres are not the root of KL’s enforcement problem. The real crisis lies in undocumented warungs and crumbling shacks mushrooming across areas such as Taman Melati, Wangsa Maju and Desa Tasik. These illegal structures encroach on pedestrian walkways, discharge commercial grease directly into residential drains and undermine shopowners who pay thousands to operate legally.
Pouring millions into beautifying legal hawker centres cannot resolve the political timidity that allows illegal roadside warungs to multiply unchecked. Too many local administrators assume that strict enforcement against undocumented hawkers will tarnish the government’s image and cost votes.
This fundamentally misreads public sentiment. Political cowardice disguised as compassion damages public trust. Voters across all socio-economic backgrounds – including law-abiding hawkers who pay for proper lots – respect an administration that upholds public order, hygiene and the rule of law.
Decisive enforcement does not mean depriving micro-entrepreneurs of their livelihoods; it means guiding them out of dangerous legal grey areas and into structured, licensed spaces.
To reform street hawking, Kuala Lumpur must combine the infrastructure investments of Lestari Niaga with firm enforcement of the law.
It is time for City Hall to stop turning a blind eye, close the alleged JMB boundary loophole, demolish dilapidated roadside shacks and apply municipal law equally to everyone.
Lai Chen Heng is a political activist and a former Kuala Lumpur City Hall advisory board member.
The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the writer and do not represent those of Twentytwo13.
Image: Kuala Lumpur City Hall / Facebook
