KUCHING – The Sarawak government is prepared to have additional state seats, as 108 seats have been made available at the assembly hall, said Speaker Tan Sri Mohamad Asfia Awang Nassar.
He said the population distribution at the district level, based on the Malaysia Census 2020, enabled parliamentarians and state assemblymen to determine the number of additional seats required.
“They should benefit from the census results to plan development and the state’s prosperity.
“The statistics are very useful and it is up to the MPs and state assemblymen to make use of the information for the well-being of people in their respective constituencies.
“We use statistical data to know how many more parliamentary and state seats need to be created.
“For example, the state seats of Senadin and Tupong, which have high populations of 132,000 and 91,000 respectively, can be broken up. It is easy to do at the state level, but the big challenge is in the Dewan Rakyat as the (federal) government does not have a two-third majority,” he added.
However, Asfia said additional parliamentary seats in the state cannot be created in time due to the coming 15th general election.
He was met by reporters today at the Parliamentary and State Assembly Constituencies Tour Series on Key Findings of the Malaysia Census 2020 and on Sarawak’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) 2021.
The last demarcation of Sarawak’s constituencies was made in 2015, from 71 seats to 82.
Meanwhile, Asfia said the Constitutional (Amendment) (No.3) Bill 2022 on preventing party-hopping by elected representatives would be tabled at the state assembly sitting this November.
Earlier, Malaysia’s chief statistician Datuk Seri Mohd Uzir Mahidin said when presenting the findings of the census on Sarawak that the state’s GDP recorded a growth of 2.9%, buoyed by the services and manufacturing sectors.
The Census 2020 commissioner also said that Sarawak recorded a population of 2.45 million with an annual average growth rate of 0.2% for the period of 2011 to 2020.
“The elderly (aged 65 and above) in Sarawak comprised 7.5% of the state’s population, compared with 6.8% at the national level,” he added. – Bernama, August 18, 2022
