Govt urged to resolve worsening flood situation in Beaufort

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KOTA KINABALU: The government must immediately come up with an effective long-term solution to resolve the perennial and worsening flood situation in Beaufort.

According to SAPP Women chief Melanie Chia, as the problem has been in existing for more than 30 years, the government should have come up with solutions to resolve it, especially since the floods in Beaufort are getting worse.

There should be no more excuses for the government not to be able to address the perennial problem, she told a press conference yesterday.

“Every year there are reports of floods in Beaufort which are getting frequent and the situation is getting worse. The government needs to deal with it urgently and not just to blame it on global warming. If we all know the weather condition has changed drastically, the more we should get ourselves ready to face the problem,” she said.

Melanie pointed out that the question of whether the problem was due to silts in the Padas River which thus caused the river to become shallow and causing water to overflow the riverbank whenever there was an extended heavy downpour was not the issue.

In fact the government should know what to do to better prevent and mitigate floods, instead of waiting for the situation to get worse then only to act, she said and lamented that by the time the worse happened, it would have caused tremendous damage (to the property) and inflicted suffering to the people.

“The problem has existed for 32 years. By right, the government should have put in place the necessary infrastructure to better prepare and deal with the situation,” she said.

Melanie also urged the state government to check and better control logging activities, in Tenom.

The former Luyang assemblywoman said she had, during the state assembly sittings, raised the issue of alleged illegal logging in Tenom, as she wondered whether the logging activities in Tenom were partly to blame for the worsening flood situation in Beaufort.

She claimed that rampant and uncontrolled logging activities in Tenom which is situated at the upper Padas River, had destroyed the natural ‘retention pond’, thus causing rainwater to inundate Beaufort district which is located at the lower part of the river.

Meanwhile, SAPP Klias CLC chairman Thomas Chong, who was present at the occasion, blamed the worsening flood situation on rampant deforestation in the district over the years, to make way for oil palm plantations and other commercial developments.

A flood victim himself, Thomas lamented that this was also the first time in three decades that his residence at Taman Muhibah was affected by flood.

Besides this, he also expressed regret that the district’s tidal gate which cost several millions of taxpayers’ money to build, had failed to mitigate the flood situation, noting that it too was submerged in the flood water.