In a survey by the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) of 14.8 million people in the country, it was discovered that good neighbourliness is at a very healthy level as 93 percent of respondents believe they have good neighbourly ties.

Good camaraderie was discovered among neighbours and it did not matter what race or religion they belonged to as the neighbourly spirit bound them and helped enjoy each other’s company and presence.

But in the same survey, it was discovered that 958,908 of those who responded confessed they never had any face to face encounter with their neighbours while six million people have daily interactions with their neighbours.

Community and social activists stated that the government should create more activities for neighbours to interact with each other such as conducting awareness programmes on issues or even gotong royong projects.

Uncivilised neighbours causing problems was discovered in the survey as being a snag to becoming friendly neighbours owing to parking issues, pet poop that is left behind and pungent odour from cooking being the common complaints.

In the survey, it was found that Sarawak, Sabah and Perak topped the list with the highest number of interactions with neighbours, while lower percentages were recorded by Kuala Lumpur, Selangor and Penang.

-THE MALAYSIA VOICE