One
THE CRUCIBLE
(cont'd - 2)
Page 1
PJ, or the abandoned rubber estates on the side of the main road leading out of Kuala Lumpur down the Klang Valley, was the site chosen for this new township. Its location was ideal. It was close and easily accessible to the capital and was also situated on the trunk road and railway which linked it to Klang and the port of Port Swettenham (Pelabuhan Kelang), and therefore was suitable for the development of new industries and factories. The old rubber land was either flat or gently undulating and the area earmarked for development - 3,000 acres - seemed adequate enough for immediate and future industrial and domestic needs. The planning was also clear and far-sighted. Adequate provision had been made for the industrial sites, and everything was done to encourage investors and industrialists to set up their enterprises there. Terms for acquiring land were reasonable; incentives such as tax holidays were given to 'pioneer industries' to attract outside capital; steps were taken to ensure that the infrastructure provided was sufficient and to make available services which could be useful to industry. The Federal Housing Trust started things going by promoting the scheme and laying down the first roads and amenities and in building the first houses. Its original target was the squatters, but within twelve months all restrictions on acquiring land for building houses were removed and others came in. In the meantime the Selangor State Government assumed responsibility for the development of PJ, and this was put in the hands of the PJ Development Corporation.
These sensible, pragmatic policies quickly paid off. Generally speaking, up to this point private contractors had tended to hold back from housing construction, except for the homes of the rich. But it soon became clear that PJ was going to flourish and private capital started to play a role by making loans available to potential house-buyers. In all this the Malaya Borneo Building Society played a prominent role. The advent and achievement of independence acted as a tremendous fillip to economic development in the country as a whole, powerfully reinforced by the launching of the First Malaya Five-Year Plan (1956-60). All this was reflected in the accelerated pace of development of the new town. Between 1957 and 1961 its population doubled, and with its 32,000 inhabitants, PJ was well on the way to achieving the planners' original target of 80,000 inhabitants. Moreover, the original area allocated for the township had already expanded by one quarter, making a total of 4,000 acres, of which about one eighth was set aside for industrial development. One sure symptom of this progress was the ever-growing traffic snarls along the old main road from Kuala Lumpur down the Klang Valley.
In 1961, then, PJ had already come into its own. In that year, the Federal Government Offices, the biggest buildings so far in the town, were completed and formed the nucleus for the new town centre which was to rise during the course of the decade. The Old Town, with its markets, eating centres, shops and cinema had been established for some time, and the town already had five primary and three secondary schools (including Assunta for girls), two banks (Chartered and the Hong Kong & Shanghai), a post office, medical centres and private clinics, churches and temples. In the industrial area 150 sites were sold and more than 80 factories were in operation, including some bearing such familiar names as Glaxo, Dumex, Malaya Acid, Century Batteries, Malayan Cables, and so forth. Planned for the near future were new car parks, another cinema (Shaw Bros.) and a park for recreation (Taman Jaya). PJ had been chosen as the federal headquarters for the Women's Institute of Malaya, and was the site of the new Cooperative Residential College as well as of RIDA (i.e. pre-MARA) Training College. The National Union of Plantation Workers, then the most powerful trade union in the country, had also made PJ the place for its head office.
Apart from all this, there was also a budding nightlife. Gazebo's in Jalan Gasing (just behind Shah's Shell petrol station), so readers of the PJ Rotary's Club Installation Dinner programme could glean, was open 'from dusk to dawn'; a place where, its management advised readers, if boy met girl and fell in love, it was their business, but 'our business is providing the best food in town'.
Such then was PJ in February 1961 when the thirty-five Charter members of the newly-formed Rotary Club gathered at the Second Residential College of the University of Malaya to witness one of their number being installed as their first president. Their town had literally appeared on the map within the last eight years, but it had grown so fast that it never went through the cowboy stage. Proof of the town's growth and development was demonstrated by the presence of the thirty-five Charter members themselves, for they were representative of a cross-section of the principal professions and occupations already found within its boundaries, which, according to Rotary law, was how it should be.
These Charter members were very conscious of their youth, their relative lack of experience and the magnitude of the challenges and opportunities that lay ahead of them as the pace-setters of a new community within a new nation. Never, perhaps, had the Rotary ideals of service and dedication and of high ethical standards, alongside the cultivation of good social relations and goodwill at home and abroad had greater meaning and cogency than in the situation in which they were placed. PJ the place and they, its natural leaders in public life and affairs, were the representatives of a new emergent nation, just freed from its colonial past. Together PJ the town and the PJ Rotary Club rode on the wave of the future, and in the thirty years that followed they were to share a common destiny as they grew and matured together.
In other words, by 1961 PJ, though still only eight years old, had progressed sufficiently to be able to provide the founder members of a Rotary Club from its citizens. It was no coincidence, then, that Albert Abel, the first president of the new PJ Rotary Club was also Development Officer of the Petaling Jaya Development Corporation.
Page 1
