Special panel to handle name change – Mayor

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KOTA KINABALU: The Kota Kinabalu City Hall (DBKK) has a special body to consider and accept any proposal from the public to change the name of a street, city or village.

Mayor Datuk Abidin Madingkir said the Street Naming Committee would look into the reasons for the proposal and not just the fact of changing it.

He said this in response to a statement made by Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Masidi Manjun who suggested ‘Menggatal’ district be renamed ‘Manggatal’. Community Development and Consumer Affairs Minister Datuk Jainab Ahmad Ayid has expressed support for Masidi’s proposal.

“The changing of the name ‘Menggatal’ to ‘Manggatal’ was proposed by former Inanam assemblyman Johnny Goh a long time ago, as he said the name of Manggatal was named after ‘Mangga’ (mango). In fact, Goh also proposed the planting of a mango tree at the town roundabout as a symbol of the town’s name.

“There are also a number of requests made by certain parties to change town, road and village names but there have been no formal applications made to the committee.

“Anyone can apply or propose the name change, but they must give us valid reasons because this is very important,” he said during a press conference on the National Landscape Day yesterday.

Apart from Menggatal, Penampang PKR deputy chief Kenny Chua had also recently proposed to the state government to change the name of Kapayan state constituency back to its original name of Kapazan.

Chua, who is also the Kapayan Task Force chairman, said nobody seemed to know why the constituency had its name changed, but as he understands there used to be a predominantly Kadazan area that lies just after Kampung Bahang, known historically as Kapazan and located in the middle of the Kapayan constituency.