Chan (left) and Shahelmey discussing water issue.
KOTA KINABALU: The Telibong 2 water treatment plant is expected to begin operation in April this year.
Deputy Federal Agriculture and Food Security Minister Chan Foong Hin said that the Sabah Water Department had informed that the water treatment plant was the short-to-medium resolution to the water shortage issue for Kota Kinabalu.
“This water treatment plant will increase the existing water supply to Kota Kinabalu by 20 percent and relieve the water shortage in the northern part of Kota Kinabalu (Sepanggar),” he said in a statement on Friday.
He said that the Water Department is also actively carrying out projects to reduce non-revenue water (NRW) in the Kota Kinabalu Central District (city centre).
“This move is estimated to be enough to meet Kota Kinabalu’s water demand and resolve the shortage of water for two to three years,” he said.
He added that this was the findings during his visit to Sabah Works Minister Datuk Shahelmey Yahya where they discussed the acute water shortage issue in Kota Kinabalu.
Chan, who is also Kota Kinabalu member of parliament, added that in the long run, the Water Department’s long-term plan to solve the water shortage issue is to build the Penampang/Papar dam to store more water to be supplied to the people.
This is the exact same dam that many NGOs had opposed previously as lands would be flooded, he said.
“Regarding this point, I had interjected and suggested that the minister to convene a roundtable meeting between all the ADUNs and MPs in the Greater Kota Kinabalu District to discuss this dam proposal before proceeding to decide on whether to proceed with the construction of the dam.
“I emphasised that it is important to come to a consensus on how to deal with the water shortage, with or without the dam. Without any consensus and agreement from all parties, it is going to be useless to continue talking about the dams as long-term solution as the government will once again face the issue of repeated opposition to the construction of the dams,” he said.
Prior to meeting Shahelmey, who is also Deputy Chief Minister III, Chan said that he had met the management of Marina Court also located at the city centre.
He said that the management had contacted him last week to inform him that for the past three months, they had to incur an additional cost of RM50,000 per month to purchase water in order to deal with the dry taps from the erratic supply of water from the Water Department.
He said that in the meeting with the management corporation’s chairman Datuk Cheong Hon Len, he learned that Marina Court is at the very tail end of the water supply infrastructure in central Kota Kinabalu.
“This certainly exacerbated matters for them,” he said.