CONTRABAND CIGARETTES EVERY WHERE

THE SALE of contraband cigarettes is now getting very serious and out of control in Sabah. This is becoming widespread and extremely worrying among the people, especially in the City of Kota Kinabalu or its nearby towns.

This situation is very troublesome and the contraband cigarette sellers do not seem to have fear toward the relevant authorities, and they continue to sell their contraband cigarette everyway.

The Sabah DAP wanita Noriah Onong said the sellers mostly are kids and women and many are illegal immigrants (PTI). They will continue to sell their goods at any time in the day, and the most famous place in the city is at the bus terminal, fronting the Philippine handicraft market and in the alleys of buildings.

The most alarming and disturbing is that they dare to take the risk of selling their contraband on the road side of passing vehicles which resulting in the drivers stopping their vehicles in the middle of the road just to purchase a pack of cigarettes. This situation will cause caused traffic jam.

The sellers of the contraband cigarettes were also ignoring their own safety and to the public. They only concern in making money. Similarly, the buyers of the contraband cigarettes are giving encouragement to these people because the price is cheap and they will stop anywhere to purchase the cigarettes.

The sellers of contraband cigarettes are brave and they know how to deal with the police and DBKK enforcement. Despite the various raids by the relevant authorities, it has no effect on them, and they will come back to do their trading even with in increased numbers.

This situation doesn’t seem to improve, but gets worse day by day. We question the effectiveness and efficiency of the authorities.  The departments should be responsible for these, are the Royal Custom, Police, Immigration, and DBKK.

What steps should they be taking to address and prevent the problem from getting worst, or just leave it to be like this hoping it will go away?   We can no longer tolerate this type of illegal activities happening every day under our noise.