The Malaysian Insight

THE scene of Malaysia’s latest tragedy, the death of 23 people in a religious school fire, is a working-class Malay enclave in the capital city of Kuala Lumpur that is struggling with demographic changes.

Kampung Datuk Keramat is flanked by towering condominiums, high-end shopping strips and secluded bungalows, but is home to some of Kuala Lumpur’s poorest residents and the lowly paid working in the city.

The religious school blaze last week, where 21 pupils and two teachers died, was allegedly the handiwork of seven local boys, the youngest being 11. It has thrown the spotlight on the enclave itself, which has had a notorious reputation for gangsterism and social delinquency.

The aftermath of the fire has unveiled not just a story of how pressures of inner-city living exploded into one of Malaysia’s worst cases of juvenile delinquency but reflects changing socio-economic profiles of a community.

The settlements in the Datuk Keramat suburb have historically housed the unskilled labourers that keep Kuala Lumpur functioning, Titiwangsa MP Johari Ghani told The Malaysian Insight.

“It has a significant population of recent migrants, mostly from Indonesia. It’s these people who do the work that Malaysians don’t want but which the city relies on,” he said.

To the south of the mixed suburb, the Petronas Twin Towers is visible from the ill-fated religious school. It is hemmed in by Jalan Ampang and its row of embassies and high commissions on the east.

Ampang and Wangsa Maju to the north and west round out the upper middle-class neighbourhoods where many of Datuk Keramat’s residents go to work as cleaners, gardeners and low-level clerks.

The Malaysians living there are a mix of low-level civil servants and petty traders plying business in the area, said Johari.

An official of the surau next to the burnt religious school, Rahman Nik, said the Malay residents of Datuk Keramat were mostly from other states.

“They come from everywhere in the country – Perak, Terengganu. Many are pensioners from the military,” said Rahman, who has stayed in Datuk Keramat for the past two decades.

The sprawling Defence Ministry complex is next door on the road to Wangsa Maju.

Suspicion and apathy between residents of different backgrounds is high and those met said they did not know of a Rukun Tetangga, residents’ association or village chief in their area.

Such resident groups are critical to promoting social cohesion in such as large area. But, Datuk Keramat’s population of between 30,000 and 40,000 people, which is roughly the size of a parliamentary seat, is just part of a larger federal constituency.

Residents, such as Rahman, blamed the problem of juvenile delinquency on migrants, who supplied drugs to youth.

Another resident, Lokman Hakim, 17, blamed the children of Indonesian migrants for being a bad influence on local kids.

But a constant police presence has kept crime limited to vandalism and petty theft, said his friend Zulfadli Mohd Zaulir, 17.

“We see lots of police patrols in the morning and evenings. So we have not had much snatch theft cases.”

Johari the MP, cautions against laying the blame on the migrant community.

“Part of the problem is that many Malaysian house owners just rent out their properties to the highest bidder and don’t care where the money comes from. They don’t come and check how many people are squeezed into one house and who they are.”

Social problems, he said, were a fact of life in every major Malaysian city, and but he insists that they are more of the exception than the norm in Datuk Keramat.

“It is not true that there are no community organisations at all. Neither is it true that all migrants and their children are bad. It’s just that we have pockets of problems that evade our best efforts to stamp out.” – September 19, 2017.