Environmental Functions Provided by Malaysian Local Government: User's Perception

Abstract

Problem statement: This research is about users’ perception of environmental functions provided by local government focused on Kedah Local authorities. Recently, the local authorities in Malaysia have been soundly criticized for poor management and they are subjected to daily barrage of questions and complaints directly in the press and tougher higher ups at the state and federal levels. Approach: Due to the problems arise, this research tried to identify the factors affecting the user’s perception of environmental functions provided by local government in Kedah and to examine the environmental functions provided by local government with level of users’ perception in Kedah. Hypotheses testing showed the research design and quantitative method through questionnaires provided to the respondents. Results: The samplings of this research are 300 respondents in Kulim Municipal Council, Sungai Petani Municipal Council and Alor Star City Council. In this study, simple random sampling was used where only 100 respondents in each local authority. This research used Descriptive Statistic and Pearson Correlation for data analysis purposes. Data were collected from 228 users in October 2007 until January 2008. In this research three hypotheses were testing. The hypotheses which include cleanliness, collection and disposal wastes, drainage and sewage were not rejects. As a result, a finding indicated that all independent variables have significance with user’s perception of environmental functions provided by local government in Alor Star City Council, Sungai Petani Municipal Council and Kulim Municipal Council. Overall of the research, all of the two objectives answer in this research which are to determine whether environmental functions provided by local government satisfies the users and to identify which extent users satisfies of environmental functions provided by local government. Conclusion/Recommendations: The recommendation was made to the local government and local society. In future research, rules and regulations should be more transparent taking by the government and relying on participation by all parties. Citizens should be more responsible to whatever environmental functions by the government to make every cent and dollars putting is complying with value of public money.