Water woes: Sandakan folks getting desperate
Published on: Wednesday, March 13, 2024
By: Mardinah Jikur
Norshimah presenting the complaint letter to the Sabah Water Department representative in Sandakan.
SANDAKAN: Residents in several villages near the Manila River Plan in Mile 12, here, are requesting the Sabah Water Department to urgently resolve the water woes faced by the people which lasted for over a year.
A representative, Norshimah Diki, said they could no longer bear the hardships caused by unstable water supply.
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“We, villagers, have to bear the financial burden of buying bottled drinking water for cooking and washing clothes,” she said.
“We are not ungrateful with the help of rationing from the department but the water sometimes cannot be consumed or cooked.”
She said the residents from at least five villages are affected.
Entering the month of Ramadan, they hoped relevant parties would help resolve the issue.
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She said this when met by the media after handing a complaint letter to the Sandakan Water Department which was received by the department’s representative, recently.
Also present was Zaini Tiksun, who represented Libaran MP Datuk Suhaimi Nasir.
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Among other things, the letter states that residents are starting to lose patience.
“It’s as if our complaints had fallen on deaf ears despite making frequent reminders to the Water Department about our water problem.
“There are too many costs that residents had to bear including transportation for the trip to purchase or refill bottled water.
“This is because the water supply through water trucks appointed by the department cannot cover our daily needs.
“They claimed that water is limited and trucks have to cover too many houses,” she said, adding that it was not possible to get immediate response from the department.
She said the residents had to wait three to four days or even a week for water aid to arrive.
Norshimah stressed that water is a basic necessity.
“This greatly burdens the population with the increasingly high cost of living.
“We hope this issue, which started since Feb 24, 2023, is looked into and immediate action can be taken. We want the water supply to be channelled from the main pipe and not just sent to us by water tanks.”
Meanwhile, Libaran MP Datuk Suhaimi Nasir voiced many times the issues faced by the people under his constituency had been brought up at the State and Federal level but a proper answer had yet to be given.
Recently, Kinabatangan MP Datuk Seri Bung Moktar Radin raised the issue of water woes who said to solve the crisis as a whole, up to billions of ringgit are needed.
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