Sabah needs RM2 bln to restore roads

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KOTA KINABALU: At least 4,560 kilometres of Sabah roads need urgent maintenance to restore them to serviceable condition.

Statistically, Sabah needs RM2 billion to catch up with the maintenance programme to put these stretches back to its original functioning state, and the figure is just to cover the backlog maintenance projects, said Sabah Public Works Department (PWD) director Datuk John Anthony.

“Judging from the budget provided for maintaining these infrastructure, especially the roads, it is not surprising that the government of the day is being criticised as having very poor maintennance culture.

“The truth is even more glaring when we look at our funding for maintaining our state as well as federal roads in Sabah,” he said when addressing professionals dealing with the planning, design, construction and maintenance of roads in the state during a dialogue at the PWD hall in Sembulan yesterday.

John stressed that in any road project, as soon as its infrastructure is completed and handed over for maintenance, its cycle begins with the routine maintenance — regular steps to upkeep its functionality due to weathering by the environment.

“Wear and tear by vehicular traffic and overloading often requires periodic maintenance to restore the integrity of the structural pavement so that it can sustain further loading by future traffic including increase in traffic volume.

“Therefore it is mandatory that a stringent maintenance programme on completed road starts at early stage for the upkeep and preservation of the pavement life and further strengthens its useful life for longer period as desired,” he said.

He said the topics for the dialogues session were prepared as informative and as educational as needed so that participants are well informed on how road infrastructure is planned, designed, constructed and maintained.

“But our goals will not be achieved without the participation on either by sharing or raising questions on these topics as your input will help us to improve and strengthen our capability to serve you and the society at large,” he said.

The event yesterday is the fifth session from a series of six dialogues as a run up to their Road Day scheduled between Oct 22 to 26 this year.

“It is our hope that the event will help create awareness among road users, stakeholders and everybody, apart from reaching out to all levels of the society, on how to preserve our roads and how to use observe the road safety.

“Today’s (yesterday) dialogue also serve as a brainstorming session where we have invited professionals from outside and within the department to discuss on what is the best practice and exploring all contributions and views from participants so all these thoughts can be documented as the best practice in the planning, design, construction and maintenance of the roads in Sabah.

“For now, we believe that it has been effective, as far as partipation is concerned. Those who participated understand why we are having this dialogues, why we are going to have the Road Day, but I think that the participation from the public at large is needed. Basically what we want from the Road Day is to create awareess to everyone, the public, stakeholders, road users, that the responsibility to preserve the road is everybody’s, not just PWD.

“We want to tell the public that if they want to help in preserving the road, please do not overload it, do npt abuse it, do not dig and cover, because that will pnly damage our road. The intention for which the road is designed and constructed will be lost, the functuionality of these stretches will be gone if everyone start abusing its usage,” he said.

Touching on road safety, he said the erection of road signages will be immaterial if road user fail to observe the rules and regulations.

“The the road can be hazardous also.We also have rules and regulations on how roads should be used, such as limits on loads and size of vehicles, so if everyone observe the rule and use the vehicle within the rules and regulations, our roads will not be damaged. But there are those who refuse to obeserve, it is as if they are playing hide and seek, catch me if you can. But we cannot rely on enforcement alone as we do not have lots of them.

“But we definitely appreciate if everyone observe the rules and regulations, so less damage will occur on our roads. We hope to inculcate this feeling responsibility among all road users,” he said.

Anthony said among the approaches taken was to meet up with associations dealing with transportation operations in the state so they will be able to disseminate the information to their fellow members.