Roland Sagah Wee Inn
SIBU: Sarawak Rivers Board (SRB) yesterday clarified that the recording of boat passengers’ particulars was never intended to infringe into their privacy but to safeguard their safety.
“We need them to provide us with their basic particulars such as name, age among others, so that we know who are in the express boats should something untoward happened.
“The exercise is carried out for identification purposes and never intended to monitor their movement or keep track of their whereabouts. The added safety measure was implemented to better safeguard their safety,” SRB chairman Roland Sagah Wee Inn told The Borneo Post when contacted yesterday.
Sagah also revealed that there were plans in the pipeline to computerise the existing manual system.
He was asked reasons for some passengers were reluctant to cooperate with the authority.
SRB senior assistant controller Christopher Chan was quoted recently in his paper on ‘Terminal Operation, River Cleanliness and Navigation Safety’ noted that although the recording of passengers’ details before boarding express boats had been implemented, not all were willing to cooperate.
To this Sagah added: “There had been some incidents in the past where there was difficulty in tracing the passengers. So that is why it is important to have their details recorded for safety reasons.”
Asked if lack of awareness was the reason behind for some people not willing to cooperate, he said his officers had been reminding and explaining to public members all this while.
In this connection, he reiterated his call for members of the public to give their cooperation as it is done for their own good.
Asked on measures to galvanise passengers’ support on the measure, Sagah, who is also Tarat assemblyman, said pamphlets had been distributed to them at the jetty terminals.
He felt those making use of riverine transport should be aware of the safety exercise.
“I have made several visits these places, and observed our officers handing the leaflets to them to inform them about the measure, and explain to them the importance of doing so,” he recalled.
Meanwhile, Sagah hinted that if the computerised recording system were to be implemented in time to come, it would be at places with more passengers where river remains the main mode of transport.
“In some places, due to the better road connectivity, people are using less of the riverine transport,” he noted.