Some villagers from Long Busang applying for their personnel documents when NRD officers went to the Kenyah village recently, with the assistance of Liwan.
KUCHING: The physical structure of the long-awaited Long Busang Clinic has been completed on a `gotong royong’ basis, but the building is empty at the moment.
Due to the urgency to have a health clinic there to provide medical services and to enable parents to have proper records of their newborn babies, Belaga assemblyman Liwan Lagang appealed to the Health Ministry to post at least a medical assistant, an assistant nurse and an attendant to man the clinic.
“We have made our request to the government, and it was also agreed by Minister of Youth and Sports Khairy Jamaluddin when he visited the village not too long ago,” he told The Borneo Post yesterday.
“The urgency for the health clinic is two-folds: to provide basic health care and to assist in registering births. To ask the people to go to Kapit or Belaga is too expensive as it will take at least 10 hours to reach either towns.”
While visiting Long Busang, Liwan assisted about 60 individuals to process their birth certificates and related documents, with the help of National Registration Department (NRD) officers.
Liwan said Data Kakus, which is home to about 2,000 people, also needed a health clinic as it was located too far away from Bintulu.
“They (Data Kakus folk) have been deprived in terms of basic health facilities. That makes it difficult for them to have their births certificates and other documents later on.”
In his recent visits to Long Busang, Liwan handed out RM200,000 Rural Transformation Project (RTP) funds for the village road project and RM47,000 for various purposes, including for their cultural development and harvesting festival, Parent-Teacher Association (PTA), and for their village security and development committee (JKKK).
In Data Kakus, he handed over RM235,000 for the village road, PTA, JKKK and church building fund.
On politics, the two-term assemblyman anticipated a three-corner fight in Belaga as there were strong indications that DAP and PKR candidates had been moving in the area.
“Insofar as BN is concerned, we cannot take thing for granted. We have to continually serve the people. We cannot afford to be complacent because we have to give what’s due to the people.”
Meanwhile, Liwan, who is also the Assistant Minister of Culture and Heritage, hoped his area would have better road connectivity in the next five years through the ‘Jiwa Murni’ programme. This initiative would connect Belaga to Ng Merit and later to Kapit.
“Besides road, we also need basic amenities such as electricity and water. For Ng Merit, there is an urgent need for a junior secondary school to cater for the increasing number of students, who presently have to go to Kapit.
Liwan said it was proper to build a junior secondary school for Form One up to Form Three in Ng Merit as the five feeder schools—SK Pliran, SK Sama, SK Merit, SK Metah and SK Ibau—were producing about 500 pupils for Form One annually.