Community leaders urged to monitor drug issues

KUNAK: Village heads, custom heads (ketua adat) and community leaders should help combat drug abuse in their respective areas by being the eyes and ears of the authorities, said Assistant Health and People’s Wellbeing Minister Norazlinah Arif.

She said leaders at the grassroots level were also expected to list the drug hotspots to be monitored by the authorities.

“Village heads, custom heads and community leaders should not turn a blind eye or be deaf and dumb about these drug cases, but we must act and eradicate drug abuse (for example) in this district,” she told reporters at the statelevel National Anti-Drug Day celebration at Dewan Sri Kunak here, yesterday.

Norazlinah, who is also Kunak assemblyman, believed that village heads, custom heads and community leaders were front-line leaders close to the people and have access to information from villagers.

Recently, the National Anti-Drug Agency (NADA) Tawau raided several villages around Kunak and detained 13 drug addicts.

Meanwhile, NADA Sabah director Bakri Bibi said 540 complaints were received last year and action was taken on all the complaints.

“Also last year 1,166 drug addicts were detained in the state in an integrated as well as detection operations by the NADA Enforcement and Security Sabah branch,” he said. - Bernama