Dato Sri Michael Manyin
KUCHING: Sarawak has submitted proposals to the federal government to build five flyovers here under the 11th Malaysia Plan (11MP), but none has been approved, so far.
Minister of Infrastructure Development and Communication Dato Sri Michael Manyin Jawong said these proposed flyovers would cost about RM1.3 billion in total, and they were meant to ease “very bad” traffic congestions.
“We have to fight for allocations in the next Rolling Plan. There are four Rolling Plans under the 11MP, and we will not give up because the situation in Kuching is getting bad now. The Kuching-Samarahan (expressway) is
even worse; sometimes, the traffic jam is as long as two kilometres,” he told reporters covering his launching of a road safety campaign in conjunction with the Chinese New Year celebration yesterday.
“We have to look into this (seriously) because Samarahan has a lot of housing estates and institutions of higher learning, like Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) and Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM).”
On the proposed Batang Lupar Bridge project, Manyin said the project was only a suggestion.
“That one (Batang Lupar Bridge) is only a suggestion because along the coast, all the way from Kuching to Miri, there are about seven (major) bridges that needed to be built.”
Manyin said his ministry already had all the estimates for the seven main bridges and three other bridges. Standing in the way of their implementation is lack of money—more than RM3 billion of it.