The Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) government has a concrete plan to tackle basic infrastructure woes, as opposed to the “empty promises” made by some parties ahead of the Sabah election, deputy chief minister Shahelmey Yahya said.
Shahelmey said that while every party was entitled to pledge solutions to the people’s woes, only long-term planning could deliver real results.
“If anyone promises that these problems can be fixed immediately once they gain power, those are nothing more than empty promises.
“What is needed is long-term planning. GRS already has a comprehensive plan in place, it just needs to be implemented according to schedule,” Shahelmey, who is also Sabah’s works minister, said in an interview with FMT.
Last week, Warisan president Shafie Apdal told FMT that his party’s priority, if it won the Sabah election, would be to improve water, electricity, and road infrastructure.
The former chief minister acknowledged that these issues were not resolved during his 26-month administration from May 2018 to September 2020, but cited constraints brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Giving the example of Sabah’s water supply issues, Shahelmey said the Warisan government at the time decided to halt maintenance works for water treatment plants in the name of cost-cutting.
“But maintenance costs are unavoidable. Operations that previously ran smoothly deteriorated because of a lack of proper planning, including maintenance and equipment replacement.
“This undermined production and efficiency at water plants. The GRS government has since appointed maintenance contractors, but such problems cannot be solved overnight – it takes time,” Shahelmey said.
He expressed hope that the implementation of GRS’s plans could continue with a fresh mandate from the people in the upcoming state election, supported by larger allocations, particularly from Sabah’s push for 40% of the state tax revenues.
“We are still negotiating revenue-sharing with the federal government. The Malaysia Agreement 1963 Implementation Action Council meeting on Sept 12 will deliberate and finalise the matter.
“This allocation will enable the state government to implement infrastructure development more effectively,” he said.
