BARAM: The government has been urged to bring back the Works Department road repair team.
Telang Usan assemblyman Dennis Ngau admitted that he has many sleepless nights thinking on ways to repair badly damaged logging roads currently used by his constituents.
The hundreds of kilometers of dirt road built by logging companies as part of their corporate social responsibility linking over 80 longhouses and settlements scattered sparsely over his constituency, according to Dennis, needed consistent repair and rehabilitation as all those roads are exposed daily to rain and shine.
According to Dennis, the only maintainence of the roads came from the logging operators themselves.
“We appreciate their assistance but what worries me is that most of these logging companies are moving far from longhouses and even down-sizing their operations. This makes it very costly for logging companies to do regular repair on the roads,” he said.
Dennis said not only the roads that needed to be repaired but the hundreds of big and small stream bridges too.
Dennis revealed that during the last DUN sitting he brought up the need for the government to bring back the mobile road repair teams especially to address the needs and calls from village headmen for roads leading to their villages to be repaired.
“The government has no choice but to put some money into this urgent needs. This to me is the only immediate way for government to elevate the suffering of our rural folks who have to go through the bad road almost everyday, and to stay true to our promise to bring development to our rural population, the effort and strategy started by our late Chief Minister Tok Nan,” he said.
“We applaud the government effort to form The Highland Development Agency to look seriously into rural shortcoming and development needs.
“ The formation of the special agency is the way forward. But current poor dirt road condition in ulu Baram is pressing so the answer is for government to bring back the road repair mobile team,” Dennis added.
On the same note, Dennis urged the government to set up its Work Department branch at Telang Usan District located at Long Lama town.
The former Long Lama sub district office is in perfect shape and should be turned into JKR Long Lama branch office.
This is where the Work Department Mobile unit can station smack in between Telang Usan constituency littered with ex or current used logging dirt road with hundreds of junctions or kilometers in length.
“We are very excited with Chief Minister Datuk Amar Abang Johari Tun Openg and the state government ‘ s effort to bring new economy and soon to put up more than 3,000 new telecommunication towers all over the state including Telang Usan to enable his vision to digitalise the state economy, and this is one very reason why we want road to be properly constructed and tar-sealed to enable potential buyers to travel with ease to meet sellers all over Telang Usan,” he said
He added that Ulu Baram is known for its quality birdnests, durians, handicrafts etc and not to mention the huge tourism business potential available.
“Without motorable road in the interior giving good connection or mobility to the people will defeat the vision of a digitalised Sarawak state’ economy,” Dennis added.
