MP, council to work at solving Sandakan problems By Rebecca Chong
SANDAKAN: Sandakan member of parliament Stephen Wong Tien Fatt yesterday met with Sandakan Municipal Council (SMC) deputy president Mohd Hamsan Awang Supain for the first time after the general election to discuss problems in Sandakan.
Wong said he highlighted all the problems in Sandakan and discussed on the action plans to be carried out together.
“We will be meeting with all the departmental heads (under SMC) on May 28 during a District Action Meeting, where we will discuss and see if there are any problems faced by the departments and work on ways to resolve them together so that we can bring about changes to Sandakan.
“Presently, the economy in Sandakan town is getting worse. The cleanliness and maintenance have not been done properly and there are a lot of things that needed to be done. I will do my best for Sandakan,” Wong assured.
The meeting was long overdue, as Wong had been trying to reach SMC president Datuk Ir James Wong for the past five years, but to no avail. Yesterday, James reportedly was unable to attend the meeting as he had to attend another function.
Wong, who is also Minister of Health and Well-being, said that the ministry’s role at the state and federal level is still being studied.
“Any decision on health and well-being in Sabah from the Federal government would have to go through my ministry before it is implemented. Since this ministry is new, we will look into the mechanism as to how we are to transfer, perform (roles and duties) between the State and Federal governments.
“I will be visiting the departments under my ministry. Most probably, these departments will continue to maintain its roles,” he explained.
Wong said he would also look into increasing the number of medical specialist at the Duchess of Kent Hospital (DOKH) here and looking into the problem of insufficient parking spaces.
As for the well-being of the people, he said he would look into improving the existing welfare assistance system, which requires annual updates from the recipients.
Wong said that when one needs welfare assistance, it should be given continuously, and should not be asked to submit the same application every year. He noted that this system had caused a lot of problems to the recipients and needed to be improved.
“We will also try to ask for more allocations for them (the needy),” he said.
Meanwhile, Elopura assemblyman Calvin Chong Ket Kiun, who was also present at the meeting, said that he had listed out the main problems faced in Elopura to the SMC, including the cleanliness problem, the neverending faulty sewage system and the low water pressure as a result of the pump problem.
“We are not here to point fingers. We are here to discuss the problems so that we can come up with solutions together,” Chong added.