PRS Youth hits out at Baru’s ‘penny wise pound foolish’ view
KUCHING: Parti Rakyat Sarawak ( PRS) Youth yesterday lashed out at state Parti Keadilan Rakyat ( PKR) chairman Baru Bian for condemning the Army’s rural infrastructure building programme, Jiwa Murni, without considering the constraints at hand.
Its information chief Andy Lawrence said not all Jiwa Murni roads have deteriorated badly.
“If the Long Luping-Ba Kelalan stretch has deteriorated to such an appalling state then government should address the problem. To simply criticise the government and labeling Jiwa Murni roads as foolish is uncalled for,” he said referring to Baru’s grouses over the road in his constituency of Ba Kelalan.
“It (the road in question) is a good start. Expanding road network to the sparsely populated rural areas requires significant resources. With limited budget, our (government) approach must be practical. He ( Baru) nags walking with bare feet, now he blames the shoes.
“If Pakatan Harapan is sincere in their fight for the people, they should show some examples. Selangor and Penang are the biggest industrialised states in Malaysia. These two states, which are held by Pakatan Harapan, should channel some of their fund to improve socio- economic and infrastructural development in constituencies held by the opposition in Sarawak. They should allocate fund to projects like road improvement works in the rural areas.”
“If Sarawak can generate and share its wealth from its natural resources to all over Malaysia, why can’t they? Their complaints are just lip service and mere noises,” Andy added.
The Jiwa Murni programme is an initiative of the Malaysian Army and the Ministry of Rural and Regional Development through the National Blue Ocean Strategy ( NBOS).
In its website, the army quoted Works Minister Dato Sri Fadillah Yusof that repair work was on- going on the 1km stretch of Ba Kelalan airport road to Ba Kelalan-Bario road whichis being carried out by the state Public Works Department (JKR).
Baru, in a press statement on Monday, described the government’s decision to build roads under the Jiwa Murni concept as ‘ penny wise pound foolish’.
Referring to Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Datuk Amar Dr James Masing’s statement on an online news portal on Sept 7 that the government would stick to providing Jiwa Murni- standard roads despite their poor quality and short durability, Baru said he was surprised by this comment.
He said that roads could only be used for a short period of time before they disintegrated and reduced to muddy trenches, which are impassable by ordinary cars. Even off-road vehicles often got bogged down in the mud, as evidenced by the many pictures published in the papers in recent years.
Before citing an auditorgeneral (AG) report that the Jiwa Murni programme was less than satisfactory, Baru said: “Take for example the Long Luping-Ba Kelalan stretch – it was built at a cost of RM57 million as a Jiwa Murni project some time ago but it is now as good as having no road.”
He said given that the Jiwa Murni roads did not last very long, it would appear that the government had been ‘penny wise but pound foolish’ in the decision to allow the roads to be built in this manner by the army.