DRAINAGE SYSTEM DESIGNED AND BUILT BY PILAKS?

Dear Editor and readers of Sabahkini,

IF YOU are a motorist, you would have noticed that it is rainy season especially in the West Coast of Sabah. And while driving through any roads in town, your car will have to splash through so many large puddles of water even after only a few minutes of rain.

Despite the hefty road tax you pay every year and the billions of budgets announced each year, you cannot even enjoy a reasonable standard of road with an efficient drainage system.

While parking my car in town with puddles all around when the rain has already stopped for half a day, I found the reason why. It is the drainage system designed and build by the pilaks or PTIs who double up as subcontractors to the BN crony contractors.

You can see from the photo how the pilaks construct the very tiny inlet made of cheap sand-cement mortar leading to a six inch white plastic pipe which can crack easily under the sun. With a minimum of rubbish and dirt on the road, all these inlets get blocked in no time, thus resulting in no drainage at all for the rain that falls on the sealed roads.

That is why all of you are practically driving through a stream instead of a road during rain, thus endangering your lives and cause mechanical and electrical damages to your vehicle.

No doubt this is not the way how the JKR and Council engineers designed the road side drains in their drawings but how come they are built this way ?

The answer: The BN contractors simply 'kasi pajak' these works to the foreign workers who simply built what they fancy as quickly and cheaply as possible, maximising the profits to be shared with the BN bosses.

These pilak subcontractors can be seen doing the works around Penampang and KK, but you wont see any of their tauke or govt officer supervising or checking their works even for one minute.

There is no point blaming the council or JKR engineers because these well connected contractors usually acts as if they are the senior bosses to the government officers.

If their payments are not certified with half the eyes closed, the engineers or supervising officersthemselves will get transferred to the jungles of Sabah.

I have known one 'local Bumi' contractors with connections who really could not even start a one million dollar contract. He was blacklisted for only one year. In no time he has already registered another company with a different name and different PUKONSA licence.

Of course this is only 5 percent of the whole story. I hope the other readers of this website can share their observations as well so the people can decide whether they still want to keep this corrupted system alive or change it for the better.

Best Regards,

JOHN BABAGON