BY GABRIEL LIHAN & JASMINE BADUN
Water treatment plants in Lingga must be upgraded to ensure clean and consistent water supply for residents.
Dayang Noorazah Awang Sohor (GPS-Lingga) said clean water in Meludam and Triso remained an issue with only 2 million litres of water suppliedy to the residents in area daily.
“Several complains have been made due to dirty and pungent water; the Sarawak Rural Water Supply Department (JBALB) should upgrade the Meludam water treatment plant to help solve the problem.
“Water rationing in Lingga has to be improved to meet the high demand in the area,” she said in her maiden speech during the motion of appreciation to the Head of State Tun Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud’s opening speech yesterday.
Dayang Noorazah revealed that as of now the percentage of clean water supply in the Lingga zone was at a minimum capacity at three water treatment plants namely, Stumbin (0.65 million litres per day), Seduku (2.0 million litres), and Lingga 0.65 million litres).
Overall, 3.3 million litres per day were needed to supply water to all the residents in Lingga, she said.
“Despite its 5,832 population, the people living in Lingga have complained that water supply is not enough and the lack of water is a weekly occurrence.
“Besides that, I would like to propose for an evaluation of the water rationing of clean water to be made once more in Lingga, especially in Linggia district, where socio-economic developments and public facilities will be built in the future,” she said.
She said a meeting was held on May 11 with JBALB Betong engineers at the Meludam District Office.
“We understand that insufficient electricity has caused problems to the water treatment plant due to the faulty water pump. The engineers have also noticed that water tanks in high places were difficult to be serviced manually and require special equipment,” she said.
On the poor streetlights in Lingga, she hoped it would be improved with allocations from the state government.
“We need proper streetlighting for roads connecting villages such as Triso-Meludam, Sembau-Lingga and Kejatau-Lingga which are more than 100 kilometers long,” she said.
