KUCHING: Sarawak DAP should stop making excuses or misleading statement, instead, put more sincere effort to address the flood woes in the city.
Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) Women chief Kho Teck Wan lamented that Sarawak DAP chairman Chong Chieng Jen, who is also the Member of Parliament for Stampin, has failed to secure funding from the federal government for flood mitigation projects.
“Yet, he has constantly politicises, confuses, tarnishes, misleads, and even deceives the people on the issue of floods,” she said in a statement yesterday.
Kho, who is also a political secretary to the Premier was referring to the ‘RM150 million allocated to the Sungai Sarawak Integrated River Basin Development (PLSB) flood mitigation project for Bandar Kuching’ as claimed by Chong.
In fact, she said, the state’s Department of Irrigation and Drainage (DID) has only received RM6.9 million for land acquisition.
Kho said Deputy Premier Datuk Seri Dr Sim Kui Hian, who is also the Minister of Public Health, Housing, and Local Government had also explained this in his ministerial winding-up speech at the state legislative assembly (DUN) recently.
This showed that the tactics used by the DAP to exploit the issue are merely for political propaganda, without any sincere effort to secure the funding for Sarawak, she said.
During a working visit to Natural Resource, Environment and Climate Change Minister Nik Nazmi Nik Ahmad, Dr Sim has said the federal minister had even apologised for the various federal changes in the procurement process, which resulted in the delay in the project’s implementation.
Kho pointed out that the DAP representatives have held both Bandar Kuching and Stampin parliamentary seats for decades, yet there has not been any significant action, even during the reign of the Pakatan Harapan government, to solve the issue of flash floods in Kuching.
“Instead, they have been continuously blaming the Sarawak government for the flood woes in Kuching due to their incompetence and lack of will to help Sarawakians,” she said.
