It’s six in the evening and you are on your way home from work. You had a good day. Your manager handed you your positive performance review and you ate at your favorite restaurant for lunch. You are excitedly driving home to see your family. 

You drive past the guard house and just as you turn into your street, something incredibly unexpected happens. Something like, you realise that you fell asleep at your desk and it’s still five hours until your bad day at work ends. Or maybe, you turn into your street and realise you actually live in a condominium. Where are you? Who am I? Why am I? Or worse, you realise you don’t actually have a house. We can help you find one. We are PropSocial. There’s the plug.

Okay, is that too much of a plot twist? Chances are, none of those things would happen. What definitely happens to a lot of us in Malaysia is that while we are all fine and dandy, we turn into our street and we hit a massive pothole. Potholes are the random holes in a road that show up at the most inconvenient times. They seem to have their own personality: irritating, pops up when you least expect it and all too eager to be your friend. Kind of like that guy Kevin at work.

Why does a pothole (Kevin) exist? To our surprise, a survey conducted by the World Economic Forum in 2018 has Malaysia ranked as one of the top countries in road quality. The problem lies in the weather and traffic. Sunlight and rain are key factors in destroying our top-quality roads. Potholes appear when too much water seeps under the road, therefore weakening the soil and creating cracks that are broken through by heavy traffic. Kind of like the time Kevin gave you his recommendation to the Boss, unintentional chaos.

The people responsible for maintaining our roads are the Public Works Department (PWD) or Jabatan Kerja Raya (JKR) in Bahasa Malaysia. They have created multiple channels for you to report potholes, Waze, being one of them. The PWD had promised that potholes reported into any of the 11 channels they have provided, will be fixed in 24 hours. How do we avoid Kevin? We can choose areas to live in that have minimal traffic. Here at PropSocial, our community shares with us their opinion on each neighbourhood by rating the level of traffic in the area.

With some research, you may be able to prevent your encounters with the pothole problem, or at least minimise it. Choosing a place to stay like Puchong which is rated at 1 star for traffic by our community versus a place like Shah Alam that lays slightly above average with 3 stars can give you a good indication of the neighbourhood. Furthermore, you can also see actual reviews from the residents themselves paired with their ratings. So before your day is interrupted with a Kevin, sit at a desk far away from him. 

(Written by Christian Palencia, 1st October 2021)