POLICE SECURITY ROAD BLOCKS

THE POLICE road blocks for security reason have been set up everyway all over Sabah on major roads. This is especially so during the recent incident of the Sulu armed militant intrusion in Sabah.

The Kota Kinabalu Member of Parliament Hiew King Cheu was caught in the 5 km traffic jam while on the way back from his visit to Kota Belud yesterday. It took him 45 minutes to reach the police check point in Telipok.

He saw there were long queue of cars waiting to cross the check points on both sides of the road, and the check points only opened one lane of the road and one car at a time to cross.

Hiew said this is not a complaint, but instead we should appreciate that the police and our security forces are executing their duties to ensure our total safety.

There are certain measures to be adopted at the check point in order not to create trouble and difficulty to the people. The hour-long “turtle-drive” to cross the check point is hard enough. Some one even ran out of fuel on the way and has to walk to the petrol station for refuel.

Many people have called the KK MP office also to tell their dismay over the matter, but MP Hiew told them be patient because now the matter is very urgent and we should be patient.

He said all the check points are needed to ensure no “intruders” can sneak in easily. The police offices are doing their jobs and it is a hectic job for them to stand guard at the check points, especially in the dark night and the hot sun.

MP Hiew advices the drivers when they are driving through the check points at night, it is always good to turn on the room-lights so that the police officers on stand-guard checking on the vehicles can see clearly the people inside the cars.

They usually can’t see you clearly but have to use a torch light shine to check. For those cars who had the heavy tinted glass must wind down the window glass for the police to check to speed up the process.

The police officers are scare when they can’t see the inside of the car and they have to be more careful. All these had slowed down the process and thus causing the queue even longer. It is noticeable that if they can see the inside of the car clearly, they will let you cross faster.

It will be advisable for the police department to install more lights at the check point, so that the visibility can be improved to avoid any undue incident happened.

The road block should not be reduced to one single lane only, but will be faster that the police allow both lanes to be opened but staggered with three car spaces in between. This will ease the car flow, and the police officers can manage better. It is good to provide more police officers to man the road block, at least four on each lane.