SIBU: The Sarawak United People’s Party (SUPP) branches here want direct flights from Sibu to Singapore, and will continue to press for this to happen.
At a press conference yesterday, Dudong SUPP chairman Wong Ching Yong revealed that the chairmen of five Sibu SUPP branches paid a visit to AirAsia’s Sibu office on Monday to discuss two issues.
“Among the issues discussed were the possibility of direct flights between Sibu and Singapore, and Sibu and Penang. The officer from the Sibu office said he did not have the authority to talk about the said direct flights,” Wong explained.
“If the direct flights between Sibu and Singapore can become a reality, many have said that the Sarawak Tourism Board (STB) should go to Singapore to intensively advertise the attractive ecological environment of the Rajang river basin (to Singaporeans) and come up with tour packages.”
In other words, Wong said that STB must do its homework first and embed the concept of ecological environment, its culture and civilisation of the Rajang river basin into the minds of potential Singaporean tourists.
Equally important, he said, the Sarawak government must improve and upgrade the infrastructure at tourist attractions.
According to him, next year would be Visit Malaysia Year (VMY) 2020.
Many Sarawakians felt that the previous VMY did not seem to bring any significant economic benefits to Sarawak, especially the Rajang river basin, he claimed.
“In the month of January this year, the website of STB revealed that more than 320,000 tourists visited Sarawak. Compared with January 2018, this was an increase of 140,000 tourists.
“However, the Rajang river basin did not seem to benefit from this increase in tourist arrivals. The calendar of the STB shows that Sibu has only two tourist draws in July 2019 — the Borneo Cultural Festival and the International Dance Festival.
“From January to June 2019, no tourism event was organised in Sibu. It seems that the Rajang river basin has been seriously neglected,” he lamented.
“What’s puzzling is that the unique and picturesque ecological landscape of the Rejang river basin has not received the full attention and support from the relevant authorities in Malaysia.”
He hoped that another meeting with AirAsia officials could be arranged in the near future.
