KUCHING: The Chinese community in Serian is appealing to the state government to appoint someone from their community to fill the vacant Deputy Resident post.
Serian District Council’s councilor, Sunny Kon, who spoke on behalf of the community, said they were very happy with the appointment of Dahim Nadot as Resident and his vast experience will certainly help the newly created division to transform.
However, he said, for a more effective administration it would be better if the government could consider getting a well-educated and experienced Chinese officer to be the Deputy Resident.
“We feel that this is necessary in view of the increasing Chinese population in Serian, which now also include Tarat, Tapah, Beratok and Siburan,” he told The Borneo Post yesterday.
Kon, who is United People’s Party (UPP) Serian branch deputy chairman, said based on the feedback gathered from the Chinese community, many of them often faced hard times when dealing with government officers due to the language barrier especially among the elderly who were not mostly not well-versed in Bahasa Malaysia or even the local Malay dialect.
He said in some government departments there was not even one staff who can communicate in Mandarin and this could lead to some miscommunication or even communication breakdown.
“If we have more Chinese serving in the government we believe that such situation will not happen and as such we in Serian are hopeful that the state government will pay attention to this and give our request due recognition for the interest of everyone,” he said.
He added that the community would certainly feel that their interest was better taken care of if they had their own people in the higher authority they could approach to voice out their problems.
“It is not that they don’t trust other races but it is always better to deal with someone who can understand us well.” he said.