Work on houses for affected residents to start mid April

KUCHING: Construction work on affordable houses to resettle residents of Kampung Mambong affected by the clinker project near the village will start by middle of next month.

Project coordinator Jonathan Mengud said a briefing and site visit for all the contractors and sub- contractors involved will be held on April 6 and the work should start a week later.

“We expect the work on the housing project to start on April 15 after the contracts are awarded,” he said.

Jonathan, who is responsible for monitoring all projects on behalf of Bengoh assemblyman Datuk Dr Jerip Susil, said piling which had been the major cause for the long delay in the implementation of the project had been completed, including the crossovers.

Barring any unforeseen circumstances, the whole project could be completed by this yearend.

Meanwhile, the proposed housing project was what the 20 or so families had been waiting for since the early 1990s after the land where their present houses are was earmarked as the source of one of the components of the clinker processing plant.

Some of the families however stayed put although the land and houses had been duly compensated.

A few sites identified before were turned down by the villagers because they insisted that the resettlement site should be near the existing village.

They agreed to the present proposed resettlement site a few years ago but the problem was that the area was a wet paddy field that required excessive piling.

This was another headache for the villagers although Syarikat Perumahan Negara Berhad ( SPNB) agreed to help them build affordable houses costing around RM50,000 to RM60,000.

The setback was that SPNB’s scope of work did not include piling.

To resolve the problem, Dr Jerip, who is Assistant Public Health Minister, secured some funds early this year to enable the piling work to be done.