KOTA KINABALU – Sabah will have a metropolitan “skytrain” system to connect Kota Kinabalu city centre to One Borneo Hypermall in five years, state Works Minister Datuk Seri Bung Moktar Radin announced today.
The deputy chief minister and Lamag assemblyman said the project is expected to reduce congestion while serving to introduce a modern public transportation system here.
The skytrain line will be extended at a later stage to link the state capital to Putatan, which is about 12km away, he added.
He said this would help draw crowds from elsewhere to Putatan and relieve the heart of the city from overcrowding.
“Good planning needs good implantation. We will ensure that the project is going to run smoothly, and we will engage the public in the process. We will do our best,” he said In his winding-up speech at the state assembly here today.
The announcement comes a day after the assembly heard that a RM1 billion federal allocation promised to Sabah to develop the Kota Kinabalu Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system in 2016 was never received by the state.
Datuk Abidin Madingkir, Sabah’s assistant minister in the Chief Minister’s Department, told the House this yesterday. The BRT was first mooted by then prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak for Budget 2016 in October 2015, and was supposed to be operational by the end of this year.
On the pending Pan-Borneo Highway, Bung said the state can no longer wait for more allocation for the project after only one package in Sabah received funding from Putrajaya for next year.
“The Pan-Borneo project in Sabah cannot wait. It is the federal government’s promise to Sabah to provide Sabah with good roads,” he said.
“So, I went to meet the prime minister, the Finance Ministry, the federal public works minister and I told them ‘no way’.
“No way are we going to wait. Sabah wants all packages to begin work next year, no matter what,” he said.
Bung Moktar said the completion of all three highway packages will be done via a private funding initiative (PFI), and several Malaysian investors will come to Sabah next month to propose their PFI proposals with the state government.
Promises over electricity, roads and water woes
On solving electricity interruptions, Bung Moktar said that Sabah is facing the problem because its existing transmission lines at 132 kilobytes (KB) are insufficient for present-day usage.
He said he will ask for an allocation from the federal government to upgrade all transmission lines in Sabah from 132 KB to 275 KB.
“Right now, two or three transmission lines are being upgraded, and five more are still waiting for allocation. While waiting for the independent power producer (facility) in Sandakan to be completed, we will build a 300-megawatt (MW) solar panel to support our power demand for four to five years.
“If all goes as planned, I can imagine that in five years, Sabah will have 100% electricity supply without a problem. By that time, we can take over SESB (Sabah Electricity Sdn Bhd) with zero debt,” he said.
He also announced that the ministry will set up a task force to start collecting data from the 73 state constituencies on the needs and conditions of all their roads next year.
“We have eight categories of roads in Sabah – federal, state, local authority, plantation, agriculture, village, rural and timber logging.
“So, these roads are under different authorities. What we need to do now is compile comprehensive and complete data of all of them and present the allocation we need to fix them,” he said.
“I believe if our demands are backed by complete data, we can get more allocation from the federal government,” he said.
On water supply problems in Sabah, he said he will present directions for the short, medium and long terms to address the issue.
The state Budget 2021 has allocated RM762 million, with an additional development budget of RM233.69 million, to the state Works Ministry. – The Vibes, December 23, 2020
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