Sabah activist Kanul Gindol calls on Prime Minister to allocate more fund.
KOTA KINABALU: Sabah activist said it’s 10 years and the Pan-Borneo Highway is still lingering within greater of the State’s capital city.
Kanul Gindol who is also Chairman of Gindol Initiative for Civil Society Borneo said it’s has been 10 years now and the snail-slow Pan-Borneo Highway hasn’t yet passed the busy Kota Kinabalu, causing daily havoc, jams and accidents.
According to him, the on-going works has been very disruptive to road users for about one decade now, beginning with the on-coming Pan-Borneo highway from the direction of Papar, and now passing the outer KK from Donggongon to Manggatal.
“The current condition of roads being disrupted and displaced every now and then from Manggatal up to Berungis, Tuaran has seen the worst daily with no sign of abetting/passing out,” he said in a statement today.
Kanul pointed out that the situation is worsened by the fact that 90% of the stretch from Manggatal to Tuaran has no street lights, whereas it is being heavily used not only by vehicles from nearby towns like Tuaran, Kota Belud, Kota Marudu and Kudat but those from Tawau, Sandakan and Ranau as well.
There have been reports of daily accidents or skirmishes with accidents on the Manggatal-Tuaran stretch due to the ever-changing snakey lanes and no streetlight at night.
“The only RM1 billion allocated yearly to do the Sabah side of the highway is not enough. There is no justice to treat Sabahans like this, ” he added.
Kanul said the three successive Federal Ministers of Public Works are all from neighbouring Borneo state of Sarawak but this did not help Sabah.
“While the Sarawak side of Pan-Borneo Highway is almost 100% completed, it would be a joke to claim the Sabah side has reached even 20% of completion.”
“I don’t want to believe the notion that the Sabah state government has not made any strong representation about the matter to the Federal government, ” he said.
There has been question whether then federal and state government’s action to end the Project Delivery Partner (PDP) mechanism for the project in March 2019, has contributed to this snail-slow development.
