KUCHING: Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Adenan Satem is making the right move in pledging more funds towards rural development, said PBB veteran Dato Peter Minos.
By making it a new policy to ensure the state’s vast rural interiors enjoy basic infrastructure, Minos believes this will not only reduce rural-urban economic gap but will also ensure social and economic justice is served.
“It is a fact that many villages and longhouses still have not enjoyed basics like treated water, tar-sealed road, electricity, clinic, and good school. Economic projects that generate jobs and incomes must be set up in rural areas to improve the living standard of rural folks. This will also curb the phenomenon of rural-urban exodus.
“There is still poverty and economic backwardness in our rural parts and something ought to be done about it. It does nobody any good, now and in the long run, to see glaring rural-urban disparity,” he said.
Minos was commenting on announcement made by Adenan in a special live interview on TV1 recently on the new policy of the state government to focus on rural development in order to give the rural folks the basic infrastructure they had long wanted.
According to Minos, any student of rural economics can see the necessity and benefits of helping rural people by bringing in modern facilities to them.
“If rural areas remained undeveloped for too long, social and political problems may crop up. This has been shown by countries whose urban and rural development is too lopsided,” he said,
Minos conceded that it is sometimes quite challenging to convince rural folks that developing their areas is good for them because they are highly sensitive about their land and are quite sentimental about their familiar environment.
Thus, it is the duty of the government officers to explain to them that any rural project undertaken by the government is for their own good, he said.