Call to dredge Rajang River.
SIBU: Sibu MP Wong Ho Leng has claimed in Parliament that he has measured the depth of the Rajang River and found that some areas are slightly more than 2m deep.
He said the Rajang, Malaysia’s longest river, “was seriously ill” and urged the Government to save it from imminent death.
Debating on the 10th Malaysia Plan, he said 2001 statistics showed that the amount of silt carried down from the upper reaches of the Rajang and its tributaries was estimated at 60mil metric tonnes a year.
However, the Department of Land and Survey only reported a total of 3.085 million metric tonnes of sand was extracted from the Rajang and Igan rivers between 2002 and 2008.
Wong said it was very clear that the main cause of frequent flooding in Sibu was siltation which made the riverbed very shallow.
TheStar
He said the Government, while carrying out massive flood mitigation projects in Sibu, should also dredge the riverbed.
On a different issue, Wong urged the Government to provide more job opportunities to Sarawakians, saying that more than 300,000 young people from the state were working in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore.