Uggah urges state JKR to step up ferry safety enforcement

KUCHING (Aug 24): The state Public Works Department (JKR) officers are urged to make sure all operating regulations are complied with to ensure the safety of ferry passengers.

Deputy Premier Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas, who is also Minister for Infrastructure and Port Development, said one of these regulations requires all passengers boarding a ferry to wear a life jacket.

“Department officers tasked with ensuring passengers safety on ferries must step up their enforcement. They must see to it that all ferry operators comply with all operating regulations.

“We have 12 ferry crossings all over the state. All passengers boarding them (ferries) must wear the life jackets,” he told an appreciation dinner here last night for the state JKR team, which secured the fourth placing in the national JKR Sports Carnival 2024 in Kuala Lumpur last week.

The state team bagged a gold medal in darts, a silver each for badminton and table tennis as well as a bronze for bowling. These results marked the team’s best outing in the last three carnivals.

According to Uggah, it happened before that the ferry workers could not even provide life jackets of the right size for passengers.

Given such scenario, he said state JKR enforcement officers should not hesitate to take action against any ferry operator who fails to adhere to the regulations.

“We must not condone any wrongdoing. It will be very sad if any accident happens and lives are lost because of our inaction,” he said.

He highlighted that JKR is now “closely watched” in the state given that the department is the implementing agency of various development projects taking place across Sarawak.

Uggah said people are closely watching the department because they want their projects to be implemented accordingly and completed on schedule.

He said Sarawak Premier Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Abang Johari Tun Openg had at a recent state cabinet meeting voiced his displeasure over the inability of some agencies to respond to the current needs of the people and state development programmes.

As such, Uggah appealed to all JKR divisional engineers to remain vigilant so as to avoid any occurrence of sick projects or project delays or workplace accidents.

“We have our SOP (standard operating procedures) and the mechanism in ensuring these. Study them and go by them,” he said.

In line with this, he suggested that state JKR director Dr Cassidy Morris form a team to relook at the SOP, from “project designing stage to preparation of tender document, the award of contract, the implementation and gauging the contractors commitment to finishing the job successfully based on the schedule.”

“We need to have a very clear SOP. And where we can shorten the construction period, we should do so as speed is a very important value in our tasks.”

On the sports carnival, Uggah said his ministry will give full support to the department in hosting the next national carnival here in 2026.

“We have done very well in hosting Sukma XXI and this has been acknowledged by the participating states. We can draw on this experience to make a great success of the 2026 JKR national sports carnival,” he added.