Ba Kelalan folk in crying need of better road
KUCHING: The people of Ba Kelalan have suffered enough and are urging the government to come to their aid to at least gravel the 50km- stretch of Ba KelalanLong Semadoh road, which is so badly affected by the current wet weather.
A former headmaster of a school in Long Semadoh, Johnathan Labo, 62, said it is already too much for the local people to struggle when negotiating the muddy and slippery road every day without any glimmer of help in sight.
“We have enough of the rhetoric — what we want is immediate action from the government to urgently improve our road with at least paving it with gravels,” Labo said when contacted yesterday.
He also hoped the government would revive the rural air service from Miri to Long Semadoh to provide the people with an alternative form of transport.
“When the road if really bad, we are stuck in our village and can’t travel anywhere. The option is to revive the air service from Miri to Long Semadoh so that we can have access to the outside world,” he said.
He added that the road from Lawas to Long Luping, a distance of about 100km, is well maintained by a timber company operating in the area. However the stretch from Long Luping to Long Semadoh, a distance of about 40km, has deteriorated lately due to the wet weather.
“The worse stretch is from Long Semadoh to Ba Kelalan which is about 54km, due to lack of maintenance as well as the wet weather,” he said.
A transporter from Long Semadoh, Singa @ Lion King hoped that the government would gravel the Ba Kelalan road immediately.
“The way I see is that the government is punishing us because Ba Kelalan is under the opposition. But this is unfair because even under the opposition, we are still citizens of this country and many of us are supporting the government of the day,” he said.
Singa also said that the MP of the area ( Lawas) is a Barisan Nasional ( BN)-PBB, man so there should not be an issue of us being left out by the BN government.
“We have been patient enough to wait for a good road. The ‘Jiwa Murni’ road, which was completed in 2013, deteriorated a long time ago because of no maintenance. With the general election around the corner, we hope the government could come to our aid soonest,” he appealed.
Meanwhile, when contacted, Lawas MP Dato Henry Sum Agong said he had written to the government ample times and hoped that the government would act urgently to remedy the situation.
“The government has certain ways of doing things but we are hoping it could help the people in my ‘ kawasan’ ( area) urgently,” said Henry, who is also Deputy Minister of Domestic Trade, Cooperatives and Consumerism.
The Borneo Post has highlighted this issue ample times but there has yet to be any action taken by the government.
Recently, Deputy Chief Minister and Minister of Infrastructure Development and Transportation Tan Sri Datuk Amar Dr James Masing had said his ministry was still waiting for a proposal from a timber concessionaire in the area to upgrade the road to R1 standard.
He also said that his ministry would study the proposal from the said timber concessionaire.
“On our part, there is no political discrimination in infrastructure development. It’s based on needs and the availability of funds. This principle also applies to Ba Kelalan,” he said.