KANOWIT, June 11: A total of 10 longboats are being used to distribute food aid to recipients in rural areas in Poi and Machan.
Machan assemblyman Allan Sidi Gramong said today that they have to use longboats to reach the two areas as river is the only means of communication.
“As there are no roads to these areas, the only choice for us is to use longboat. We have chartered five longboats to each area to distribute the food aid since June 7. We are expecting that all residents in these two rural areas will receive the items by June 14,” he said.
Allan said it was not an easy task to send the food aid to the recipients as they would have to depend on the weather and water level as some parts of the stream can be quite shallow.
“Luckily these few days, the water level is quite high. This makes our task easier. It takes up to three hours to reach these two areas. The fastest is two and half hours if the tide is high,” he added.
In addition, they also have to make more trips as each longboat can only carry 20 sets of the food basket.
“We can only use small boat according to the size of the stream and tide,” he said.
There are more than 4,800 food aid recipients in Machan constituency.
According to Allan, half of them have already received the food aid as at today.
The State government is allocating RM250,000 to each of the 82 constituencies to buy food aid for those affected by the implementation of Movement Control Order 3.0.
Each food basket, costing RM70, consists of cooking oil, flour, instant noodle, a tin of sardine, biscuit, tea and rice. — DayakDaily
