(Sarawak, Friday): The Sarawak State Assemblyman for Kidurong Chiew Chin Sing urged the government to speed up the upgrading works on the Pan Borneo Highway.

He said that although some parts of the highway had under gone total repair and re tarring , but many other parts along the highway had not and are in urgent need for the upgrading works.

According to Chiew, those parts of the highway which had not been repaired had cracked up, the road surface is not even and driving on them are most uncomfortable, like riding in a roller coaster, up and down while at the same time one gets tossed from left to right as if one is going through a total body massage. The ride is really tireing.

Chiew was referring especially to several sections of the road in the Bintulu Division, for example  the several kilometers of road near the Tatau town area between Bintulu and Tatau and the portion up to the 25th mile on the Bintulu/Miri road. The bad conditions of these parts of the road had been like that for quite a while  already and  should be repaired immediately.

Chiew also called on the government to widen portions of the Pan Borneo highway for the construction of overtaking lanes to alleviate the jamming in the middle of the highway.

He said that so many times one would encounter  2 or 3 big lorries trailing one another on the highway and overtaking these lorries are really difficult and even dangerous.

Many time the lorries want to give way but there isn't a side lane where they can let way, as a result the traffic jam gets longer and longer because the road is winding and one could hardly see what is coming. Yet sometimes, even under these circumstances driver would take the risk and try to overtake and  accidents occur just like that and who knows how many lives had been wasted like this.

'I strongly believe that if  overtaking lanes are constructed at different strategic places , accidents on the Pan Borneo highway could be reduced.'

The government had been promoting hard on road safety but if we do not have good roads, safe roads with matching safe driving then what the government is taking about on road safety is just a lot of  hot air.

(27/10/2006)