SIBU is still lacking direct connectivity for visitors who want to visit the town, said Datuk Tiong Thai King (BN-Dudong).
Citing tourists who visit Kota Kinabalu in Sabah as an example, he noticed that many of them did not visit Sibu as there were no larger aircraft available to bring them.
“So far, MASwings is monopolising this route and there has been no improvement for more than 10 years. This has brought great inconvenience and higher cost of travel connections and so on. We should not allow MASwings to monopolise this route. Instead, we should implement an open sky policy to allow other airline companies to join in to improve the services,” he said when debating the Yang di-Pertua Negeri’s address at the 18th State Legislative Assembly (DUN) sitting on Tuesday.
In view of this, he queried if the Kota Kinabalu-Sibu-Kota Kinabalu route airline agreement with MASwings had been extended again.
“Our state government has been emphasising power devolution. If such agreement was extended again, we should have the right to speak up to dissolve such agreement so as to protect the interests of Sarawakians in general and Sibu people in particular.
“Furthermore, it is in our own air territory. It is only justifiable that the federal government should grant full autonomy to the state government to make our own decision for our own people, our own state and own interest pertaining to direct connectivity and to allow different airlines to give better services to boost our tourism industry,” he stressed.