By D’Drift Team
LIMBANG, July 4: Datuk Nelson Balang Rining has been appointed the chairman for Laku Management Sdn Bhd (Laku) since February 20.
Balang said he saw it as his social duty to take up the position before thanking the Sarawak government for having the trust and confidence in him.
Despite being new, the former Ba Kelalan assemblyman already has formulated his vision and mission for the water producing company which is fully owned by the Sarawak government.
He said Laku has been performing well but still there are rooms for improvement especially in reducing non revenue water (NRW).
“In Malaysia, for the year 2017, the average NRW is 35.5 per cent and for the whole of Sarawak, it is 37.8 per cent. However, for Laku, it was 26 per cent. So comparatively, Laku is doing very well.
“However, there are other countries in the world which are doing much better. These countries are Singapore, 5 per cent; Denmark and Netherland, 6 per cent; Germany and Japan, 7 per cent.
“I hope to push Laku further by modelling after these countries to achieve an even more impressive NRW rate and to achieve a world class standard in terms of performance,” Balang told D’Drift Team here recently.
Another vision Balang has for Laku is to enhance its human resource capability to further transform Laku into a high performance company.
“It is also my vision to turn it into a high performing company of choice of employment and model for future jobs,” said Balang who is also Progressive Democratic Party (PDP) secretary general.
Thirdly, Balang will thrive to reduce the cost of water production by negotiating for a lower electricity rate from Sarawak Energy Sdn Bhd.
“Electricity expenditure takes up 25 per cent of the cost of producing treated water. If that part of the expenditure can be reduced, we may be able to cut down our cost quite substantially. This will be the direction we are going towards,” said Balang.
On water tariff, he said the last time the water tariff was adjusted in Sarawak was in 1995 while most states in Malaysia had made the adjustment in recent years.
“As the Sarawak government is a caring government, I don’t see any adjustment will be made in the near future,” added Balang.-DayakDaily
