SMC forms committee to work on city upgrade

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Tiong (second right) hands over a certificate to a retiring staff — Lau King Liong who has served for 39 years, while (from left) Rogayah and Morshidi look on.

Tiong (second right) hands over a certificate to a retiring staff — Lau King Liong who has served for 39 years, while (from left) Rogayah and Morshidi look on.

SIBU: Sibu Municipal Council (SMC) will form a working committee soon to look into the proposal of upgrading SMC into a City Council.

SMC deputy chairlady Rogayah Jemain said the committee will consist of the council management staff and headed by acting secretary Morshidi Frederick, with Sibu Resident Hii Chang Kee as advisor.

“The main purpose of the working committee is to gather information including the population of Sibu,” she said

when asked on the proposed working committee, which she shared at the full council meeting here yesterday.

Rogayah added the committee would need to gather information from Sibu Resident Office for a start.

She pointed out that the information was necessary to strengthen the justification to the department concerned in Putrajaya in order for SMC to be upgraded to a city council.

Adding on, Rogayah said only when the necessary information were gathered, could they proceed to the next step of forming the steering committee.

The steering committee will be headed by SMC chairman Datuk Tiong Thai King and assisted by herself, while the advisors are Second Finance Minister and Bawang Assan assemblyman Dato Sri Wong Soon Koh and Assistant Minister for Science Research and Biotechnology and Nangka assemblyman Dr Annuar Rapaee.

Meanwhile, at the full council meeting, Tiong explained that there were numerous ways that public could channel their complaints regarding the council’s services such as to Talikhidmat, SMC Hotline (310808), email, Facebook, dialogue sessions such as the ongoing meet-the-people sessions among others.

“People’s satisfaction in council’s services has always been our top priority in order to ensure our service delivery at its best,” the Dudong assemblyman said.

He called for full commitment from the management to deal with the public complaints by recording the complaints through proper channels so that there would be an appropriate monitoring mechanism.

Tiong pointed out that background checks on the complaints received needed to be done before they could proceed with appropriate actions.

“We also need to emphasise on the feedbacks to complaints and tell them the truth regarding the status of their complaints.

“Thus, we seek public’s empathy and patience as there are some complaints which cannot be solved immediately, especially when involve funding issues and complainants have to be informed regarding the constraints that we encounter in solving those issues,” he said.

On another subject, Tiong disclosed that a mass cleaning campaign was successfully carried out on Oct 29, 2016 with a huge turnout of 1,050 participants to wage war against Aedes mosquitoes.

Hence, he looked forward to such cooperation in the future, while urging the public to ensure good maintenance of their surroundings to prevent aedes mosquitoes from breeding.