Major cleanup of drains, rubbish at Kg Forest
SANDAKAN: The Public Works Department (JKR) with the Sandakan Municipal Council (MPS) had to put in a lot of manpower and efforts to clear up severely-clogged drains and remove mounds of rubbish at Kampung Forest here during a recent clean-up.
“We were shocked by the amount of trash dredged up from the drains. A lot of it was probably washed up into the drains by rain, but some were probably thrown in by certain people who treated drains and open spaces as their dumping grounds,” lamented Taren Sunil Manoharan, the head of the Highway and Public Utilities Committee (HPUC), a unit under MPS.
Following a complaint, HPUC and the Drainage and Irrigation Department (DID) officials visited Kampung Forest and discovered the drainage situation there to be unsatisfactory.
However, Taren Sunil said since the scope of the job was not under DID jurisdiction, the JKR and MPS sent in their respective crew and equipment to dredge the drains and then disposed of the dug-up rubbish to enable the drain-water to flow smoothly again.
Separately, MPS workmen also had their hands full when they had to work into the night to remove mounds of rubbish dumped at the site meant for communal dustbins.
Although they got the job done, Taren Sunil expressed his disappointment over the ‘couldn’t-care-less’ attitude of those responsible for dumping rubbish, which had not changed.
“It is really very frustrating to see our MPS crew working so hard to clean up a place only to see the same thing happening all over again after a short period of time. The nightmare keeps repeating itself at many of the other places that we have taken great pains to clean up. I really look forward to the day when such attitude has changed for the better. Only then can we expect the cleanliness of Sandakan to be sustained,” said Taren Sunil.
He said to improve coordination, the HPUC and JKR had been making numerous joint visits to different localities around Sandakan to look into issues concerning roads, drains and trash collection. Very often, the joint teams would include representatives from the DID and officers from the service centres of local elected representatives.
“In this particular case at Kampung Forest, it was DID that received the public complaint and they helped forward it to us to get the relevant agencies to cooperate in solving the issue.
“We thank and appreciate DID for relaying the complaint to HPUC and joining us for the initial inspection of the area,” said Taren Sunil.