Labuan cops mull task force to tackle ‘mat rempit’ issue

LABUAN: As night begins to give way to dawn, fully-modified highperformance motorcycles pull up to an empty Labuan villages’ street.

While the island sleeps, the motorcycles engines fill the air with heavy smell of petrol. The motorcyclists huddle together to set the route, always at the last possible minute.

One of them spots the red and blue glare of lights of the police patrol vehicle and they quickly scramble to their motorcycles, regrouping a few miles away to continue the race.

This is happening almost every Saturday night in the duty-freeisland here, with Kampung Lajau becoming the favourite street for illegal racing. Labuan police chief, Supt. Muhamad Farid Ahmad, said, a special task force is being considered if the ‘Mat Rempit’ issue here becomes uncontrollable.

“Every Saturday night, we will pull out all the station chiefs (ketuaketua balai) to lead other personnel for mobile road blocks, but it seems these illegal racers will somehow alert one another once they smell our presence and they will continue to race after we leave the area,” he said.

Farid was commenting on villagers’ outcry over what they claimed to be ‘rempit gegarkan Lajau’ in the wee hours of Saturday night.

He said, the police would be going deeper in its investigation focusing on factors that encourage youth’s involvement in the ‘mat rempit’ menace such as drugs or other social ills.

“Every weekend night, we will be mobilizing our personnel, not only to address the illegal racing menace, but also to tackle disturbing trend of drunk drivers,” Farid said.

He said more than 50 tickets have been issued to errant motorists in a four-hour ‘Ops Mabuk’ on Sunday morning.