BAD RURAL ROAD OR BAD GOVERNMENT?

By : DR BENJAMIN YAPP

SABAH DAP interior Mobile service team led by Sabah DAP Parliamentary Liaison Chief for Keningau & Tenom, Dr Benjamin Yapp inspected the bad rural road conditions at Jalan Kg Binsilon, Tenom about 2.5 km from Tenom Town after having received public complaints from several villagers.

The rural folks complained to Sabah DAP that the gravel road from the junction of Old Tenom Road leading to Kampung Binsilon, Jalan Simpang I & II were in bad conditions.

The locations were subject to heavy floods during the raining season with dangerous high level of flooded river water that could rise to over 10 feet of water from a nearby Padas river. The villagers said that their crops, livelihood and safety were affected by the occasional floods.

Despite repeated complaints and pleads from the villagers to the authorities concerned in the past, nothing had been done to improve the situations. According to the village folks, in the early 1980s, the areas were heavily flooded with over 15 feet of water that affected the entire villages and the rural people there were in dangers of being swept away by the strong current that destroyed their crops and properties.

There were incidents of crocodiles that attacked villagers during a great flood in early 1980s when the creatures were strained at the farm lands, according to a farmer, Mr。 Tan, aged 50 years old who had been living there for the past decades.

Sabah DAP queried as to why the Government with Billion of Ringgit allocation for rural road and land infrastructure development had completely neglected the rural people to the extent of endangering their lives with the current bad road and occasional flooded situations that normally would cause the dangers of heavy floods from the swollen Padas River.

In 1981, there was an incidence of raising river water that rose to a dangerous level of between15 feet to 18 feet of water during the worst flood situations in Melalap District.

Sabah DAP urged the BN Government to immediately look into the urgent needs and problems of the rural people who were deprived of the basic rural infrastructure in Tenom parliamentary constituency.