DRY....Picture showing the dry dam site and treatment plant.
THE Sabah DAP team visited the new Kudat water supply long term scheme, the Milau dam site and its water treatment plant in Kudat near Sikuati.
The water supply is supposed to supply water to the Kudat district under a long term plan to cover the shortage of water in the district, with a cost of RM 300 million or more. The project involved the construction of a water catchment and storage reservoir with a dam embankment.
The water treatment plant is located downstream few kilometres away next to a small stream. A new pipe line was constructed to link up from the treatment plant to connect to the existing pipeline from Kota Marudu to Kudat.
The Sabah DAP team was specially urged to go to the site by the Kudat folks during its visit recently on Saturday, 17th July. Very surprisingly, the sight of the dam site wasn’t impressive at all, and it made the DAP members felt disappointed and rather shocked by the sight.
The whole dam catchment area is just an embankment with an empty valley, and no water can be seen anyway. There is no stream or any water source in the catchment area, and it is just a dry valley.
The project started in 1st August, 2005 and supposed to be completed in 31st January, 2008 but there were extension of time granted. Until today, we saw some workers started to pack up to leave, and it is a long delay from the original completion date.
The design of the whole water treatment works is to receive water from the dam, and then sucked up to the treatment works for filtration and treatment. The water catchment in the dam site is totally depending on the rain water and there is no stream or river water to supply to the dam.
What is the use of the dam where there is no supply of water source? Just depending on the rain will not be sufficient to supply the whole of Kudat district. This is another big ‘White- Elephant’ project by the Barisan Nasional government?
The project was first proposed some 15 years ago, and never got off the ground due to much criticism on the source and insufficient supply of raw water. Kudat district is known to be an area where there is little rain and the whole area is dry, why it is still being implemented and constructed today?
Will this be able to supply enough water for the district? Looking at the dam site one can surely tell that it would function fully. The other question is why spent RM300 million for a project not going to function fully and guarantee to supply water to the whole Kudat district in the long run.
The land acquisition from the kampongs folks in the dam site were not fully settled by the state government, and we received many complaints during the visit. It is understood that the kampong folks received only part payment and some 75% only. Why can’t the state government pay the sum to them quickly?
No comments:
Post a Comment