MULTI MILLIONS PROJECT CAME UNDER FIRE

WASTED…the river side beautification work in progress, behind is the blackish foul river water.

The people in Sadong Jaya and in Kota Kinabalu had approached the KK MP complaining and expressed their concern over the logic behind the construction of the ‘Sembulan River Side Beautification Work’ which is spending the tax payers’ money up to RM20 over millions.

The work is in progress and the work on the construction of the pavements and other associated work is being implemented. The only problem is that will this whole project going to benefit the people.

This is a comment received from an architect who made a personal call to KK MP Hiew expressing his opinion about the project. He asked Hiew to go down to the Sadong Jaya river side to see for himself on the environment impact and the situation existed there.

Hiew went to Sadong Jaya and he noticed the beautification work is in progress. Instantly he had a feel of what the people are complaining about, the puncheon foul smell emitting from the river on both sides of the Sadong Jaya is enough to make you vomit out.

The foul smell is so strong and no one will be able to tolerate that by standing or walking along the river side walkway. This is especially so when the sea breeze is blowing towards the walkway. The workers there also said they can hardly bear the bad smell. Sometimes they feel like getting sick because of this gas emitted carrying toxic fumes or bio-gas.

The rivers/storm drains on both sides of the Sadong Jaya are carrying the dirty water from Luyang, Lido, Karamunsing, QE hospital, Sembulan and Foh Sang area. These foul water discharge from the river to the open sea, and most of the time it is stagnant and stay not flowing for days. The smell emitting from the river is strong and puncheon.

The people say how can they take a leisure walk or sit by the river side to take lunch or eat in the food eateries there? This is not suitable at all unless the government can clear the river to make sure that there is no foul water in the river, and we all know this is impossible.

Therefore, the huge sum of RM20 millions spent here is unjustified. The question is why the project was not put under careful planning and check before this is implemented.

The people here said it is better to spend the money to improve the car parking problems in Sadong Jaya then to do the river front. It is impossible to find parking space here, and what we need is a multi-storey car park to be built here, or to do more car parking space along the river sides by extending the river banks.

By doing so, may be another few hundred cars can park easily here. Furthermore, the road system here must be upgraded to accommodate the traffic flow which faced heavy jam daily.

As the people said the river side project will not benefit the people and it is going to waste money, therefore MP Hiew called upon the government especially the DBKK to review the suitability of the development project.

The money could be used to build the flood control gate and pump house to clear the flood water instead. This will be a better solution to help the people who are always in deep flood in Luyang and Lido area. When compared to the beautification work this flood control system would benefit the people much more, and cost less.