Okay to fly historical flag to mark Sarawak Day, says deputy minister

KUCHING: There is nothing wrong with flying the old state flag to celebrate Sarawak Day as it is part of history, said Michael Tiang.

The Deputy Minister of Public Health, Housing and Local Government II said those displaying the old flag simply wanted to remember the past, when the Kingdom of Sarawak was first formed in 1841.

“I don’t see any disrespect or being not patriotic, but it is in fact the other way round. They love Sarawak and honour Sarawak’s history and that is a beautiful thing to do,” he said after launching the Medical Devices Regulatory Endemic Phase Roadshow at the Sarawak Heart Centre yesterday.

“I’ll ask them that when they remember our history, to remember our present status.”

He was responding to questions on whether the local authorities would take down old Sarawak flags on display.

According to him, displaying the old flags was similar to acknowledging Rajah Sir James Brooke and Rosli Dhobi.

He added that the people were encouraged to display the current Sarawak flag, but this was not a requirement.

“Just like when we celebrate Malaysia Day, we put up the Malaysian flag,” he said.

On the rising prices of housing in Sarawak, Tiang said it was due to increasing labour and material costs, as well as inflation.

To counter this, he said the ministry had introduced several programmes to make affordable housing more accessible.

Among the programmes are housing deposit subsidy of up to RM10,000, rental housing schemes, and urban rental assistance programme of RM200 per month for three years, he said.

“My ministry only regulates on developer licensing and in charge of strata management, and we do not deal directly with housing pricing.

“What we can do is that we communicate with bodies like Sheda (Sarawak Housing and Real Estate Developers’ Association) to work out certain programme to help people in purchasing houses, which is now at the evaluating stage. We will announce it soon, which we hope will counter the property price hike,” he said.

He added this would hopefully help the B40 and M40 groups, as well as young people to solve their housing issues.