SELANGAU, May 4: Kapitan Tiang Kwong Hui is appealing to the government to expedite the setting up of a secondary school here.
He said since 1974, local residents have been requesting for a secondary school to be established.
The government has taken that into consideration, and approved two school building projects in the past.
“However, due to some local factors, somehow Selangau has yet to see the plan materialise,” Tiang told DayakDaily today.
He said the secondary students here either have to go to Balingian or SMK Luar Bandar for their education.
“These schools are all very far. Our students here have to take buses early in the morning at 4am so that they can reach school in time. Then they take about two hours to come back to Selangau again after school.”
“We were told by our state assemblyman (Christopher Gira of Tamin) that the government has approved the building of a secondary school here and a site has been identified. What we are requesting is for the project to be expedited,” said Tiang.
He said due to the lack of a secondary school, some parents have moved from Selangau to Balingian or Sibu Jaya.
Tiang who is a businessman also hoped that the government could help the local community by getting a commercial bank to set up its branch in the area.
“The Agro Bank that we have here, does not allow withdrawal of more than RM5,000. Then there is also no current account offered. The bank only offers savings and we can’t bank in or cash in our cheques here.
“Businessmen still need to travel all the way to Sibu, to get their bank transactions done,” he said.
He even pointed out that due to the lack of necessary bank services, many of the local businessmen were forced to keep hard cash in hand.
*However, when we want to buy property, we need to show our bank statements. And because everything is done in cash, there tend to be very few transactions on the statement which poses problems for us when we want to acquire property,” he said.
Meanwhile, Tiang also requested the government to approve a piece of land for residential houses to be built.
“You look around here. There is no residential area. We all live on the second floor of the shop lots. Many of us have settled down here and we want to have proper houses.”
“The problem here is there is no land to build houses. We hope the government can help us in this area,” said Tiang. — DayakDaily
