LET BN DECIDE ON TENOM CANDIDATE

TENOM: The member of parliament here, Datuk Raime Unggie, yesterday said that the candidate for the Tenom constituency in the 13th general election should be decided by the Barisan Nasional (BN) leadership.

“For me, let the BN leadership decide the BN candidate for this area in the 13th general election,” he said to the media at his Hari Raya open house at his residence in Taman Seri Maintailang here.

He said what is important is the spirit of cooperation and solidarity among leaders and members of the BN in Tenom area which should be maintained and further enhanced.

“We need to focus and realise our support to the government through the spirit of BN. Significant collaboration among grassroots leaders by focusing on the development of people, especially in areas of education, health and other infrastructure development,” he said when commenting on the recent remarks by PBS vice president Datuk Radin Malleh who requested the Tenom parliamentary seat to be returned to the party.

Radin had asked the PBS leadership to put forward a request to BN to have the Tenom seat returned to PBS.

The Melalap assemblyman said the Tenom constituency is a traditional stronghold of PBS and its influence is still very strong here.

The seat is currently held by Raime of Sabah Umno.

“In my opinion, the government did not fail because many projects have been implemented, including clean water supply, roads and electricity. I hope the people are not easily influenced by the opposition who only emerge when election is coming,” he said.

Raime also said development projects that had been approved by the government for his area should be implemented immediately.

He said this would convince the people that what had been promised during the last general election were being fulfilled.

Raime said the government, through Prime Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Najib Tun Abdul Razak, had channeled an allocation of RM61.4 million for the upgrade of water supply throughout the Tenom parliamentary area.

He hoped the project could be completed as soon as possible as there were still water problems, especially in villages where the gravity pipe system was still being used.

Raime also asked the department not to wait for the completion of the pipe project but instead send water to the villages facing supply problem during the dry season.

According to him, the upgrading of water supply was being carried out in eight packages and was expected to be completed by next year.

Raime said the most critical areas experiencing water problems were villages in Cinta Mata and Inubai.

As for roads, he said 60 per cent of them in Tenom had not been paved.

He said it was disappointing that roads to farms had been paved but not to residential areas.

Regarding electricity supply, he said villages, especially in Rundum, still used the solar system.

“However, the best sources of electricity for remote villages in the short term are still the solar system provided by the government. For the long term, the government will strive to channel electricity through Rural Electricity Supply,” he said.

Some 5,000 people, including government officers, community leaders and BN component party leaders the open house. (theborneopost)