KUCHING: A progressive plan is needed to restructure the public transportation system in Sarawak, says newly-appointed Commercial Vehicle Licensing Board (LPKP) Sarawak chairman Wong King Wei.
He said as such, LPKP played an important role to ensure public bus service providers not only ply routes deemed profitable but all routes so that the city is well connected.
Wong revealed that a total of 49,991 licences for commercial public vehicles had been issued in Sarawak.
“Out of this figure, we have discovered that about 227 licences had issues,” he said during a press conference at Sarawak LPKP headquarters here yesterday.
“Apart from issuing licences, LPKP needs to know what the routes that the public bus service providers will ply when we issue the licence.
“We are not doing it blindly but doing it intelligently in processing the licensing, more foresight as we need to foresee the impact on public commute, whether it is beneficial to the people as a whole or not when we issue the licences to the stakeholders,” he added.
He opined that the current public bus transportation service was not sufficient to widely cover all areas.
“We are looking into this problem. Although we have issued over 200 public bus licences, this is still not enough to cover all areas,” he said.
Wong, who is Padungan assemblyman, added: “I believe at the moment everyone would agree with me that the current public bus service is zero.
“This is not only in Kuching but in Bintulu, Sibu and Miri and within the cities.”
He called upon all related authorities and private stakeholders to work together for the benefit of Sarawakians.
“There is a need for a change of attitude in issuing licences. To ensure that the policy is well-executed during implementation, I urge that we put aside our political differences.
“I am looking forward to working together with the state government and the stakeholders so that we can identify what fundamental problems are affecting the public bus transportation system in Sarawak and how we can better improve the system,” he said.
