KUCHING, April 21: Community leaders have made invaluable contributions and sacrifices during the Covid-19 pandemic by assisting in food distribution, highlights Tan Kai, a political secretary to the Chief Minister.
“I wish to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude to community leaders and their teams from NGOs (non-governmental organisations) who are willing to assist the Kuching Resident Office.
“The role of community leaders is to help in delivering and distributing the food bought by the Divisional Disaster Management Committee.
“Bear in mind that our top priority is to bring down (the number of cases) and to stop the spread of Covid-19. However, the community leaders have to take the risk to deliver the food aid; their sacrifices are invaluable.
“At such a difficult moment, politicians should put aside the usual politicking, blaming tactics. This doesn’t help but only disunites our community,” Tan asserted in a press statement today.
He took the opportunity to urge those who need food assistance to contact either their respective community leaders, Kuching Resident Office hotline at 082-507700 or Welfare Department.
Tan emphasised the Sarawak government had implemented the food aid programme via the Divisional Disaster Management Committee during the Movement Control Order (MCO) period where the purpose of the programme is to assist low income families especially the B40 group and daily paid families in financial difficulties due to the MCO.
He pointed out that 16 state constituencies in Kuching division including N9 Padungan, N10 Pending, N11 Batu Lintang and N12 Kota Sentosa had been allocated aid amounting to RM 3.2 million via the Kuching Divisional Disaster Management Committee, Kuching.
He disclosed that as of April 20, Batu Lintang has fully utilised the 4,000 units of food aid, with distribution encompassing Tabuan Jaya including Tabuan Dayak and Sungai Maong.
In the Kota Sentosa cosntituency, 3,375 food baskets have been delivered, inclusive of most of the BDC Stampin resettlement scheme, 7th Mile Bazaar and Sungai Tapang.
For Pending, a total of 3,150 sets has been delivered which covers the Foochow Road areas, Jalan Selanggan Batu squatter area, Taman Riverview, Pending Heights, Sungai Apong, Bintawa and Kenyalang Park.
As for Padungan constituency, Tan revealed that so far 2,375 sets have been distributed to most of the tenants at KMC flats, Petanak Market hawkers, Kampung Lumba Kuda, Jalan Tabuan, Jalan Sekama, Jalan Mendu and Ang Cheng Ho.
Tan disclosed this in support of an earlier statement by Kuching Resident-cum-Kuching Divisional Disaster Management Committee chairwoman Sherrina Hussaini on April 19.
Sherrina had disclosed that that a total of 62,777 households within Kuching Division especially from the B40 income group received food aid by the Divisional Disaster Management Committee.
She also revealed it has achieved an average of 90.7 per cent of food deliveries for Kuching Division where the divisional committee had received RM3.2 million for the procurement of food baskets for 16 constituencies in the division. — DayakDaily
