Poor road conditions giving Sarawak a bad name

POOR road conditions in Sarawak, including along the 1,000km-long Pan-Borneo Highway, is giving the state a bad name.

First-time visitors are always bewildered by the roads in Sarawak which are not only dotted with potholes, uneven surface and too many bends but are also without any safety guard rails along most stretches.

Recently, 32 journalists and TV crew from various media organisations in the country took a ride from Bintulu town to the Bakun Dam site, stretching some 200km away and Bakun to Miri City (about 400km).

The group of journalists were invited by Sarawak Hidro Sdn Bhd, the developer and manager of the Bakun Dam, to tour the dam site.

The 220km ride from Bintulu Airport to Bakun took more than four hours, partly because the bus could not travel fast along the Bintulu-Bakun Road owing to the dangerous road conditions.

The Bintulu-Bakun Road is a federal road. Many parts and stretches of the road are, however, in dire condition, with deep and wide potholes.

The road is also without any street lighting, making driving especially at night risky.

The Pan-Borneo Highway, the main trunk road that links all the divisions in Sarawak, is less tattered with potholes but is still flawed by uneven surface, winding and narrow along some stretches.

“Why is a state with so much natural resources plagued by such poor road conditions?

“Sarawak has financial resources from timber, oil palm and oil and gas, and yet the very basic amenities are so lacking,’’ said an editor of a business weekly from Kuala Lumpur.

He said the roads in Sarawak were at least 20 years behind those found in Peninsular Malaysia in terms of quality and workmanship.

“Even places like Terengganu and Kelantan have better roads than Sarawak,’’ he noted.

Sarawak Hidro environment manager Ten Wuan Ping said the maintenance for the Bintulu-Bakun Road, which is a federal road, was under the jurisdiction of the Public Works Department (JKR) while the state roads were managed by contractors hired by the state JKR.

“People living in Bakun had complained for years about the bad condition of the Bakun-Bintulu Road and that it is getting worse by the day because of the heavy vehicles and logging trucks owned by timber firms plying the road daily.

“There were proposals from the people that these timber firms should pay for the repair and maintenance of the road. It is these logging trucks that are damaging the roads because they are using the road daily to ferry logs to the sawmills,’’ he added.

Several state leaders had also made the same suggestions before but to no avail.