Sarawak Public Works Dept Recruits 414 New Technical Staff To Overcome Shortage

KAPIT, Aug 8 (Bernama) -- The Sarawak Public Works Department (JKR Sarawak) is in the midst of recruiting 414 technical staff to fill the shortages faced throughout the state, especially in rural areas.

The State Deputy Premier Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas said the recruitment exercise was crucial to ensure the state’s development projects went smoothly, and that he would meet Sarawak state secretary Datuk Mohamad Abu Bakar Marzuki to request the reinstatement of duty allowance payments for state civil servants working in rural areas.

"We hope to be able to send additional staff by the end of the year so that they can start working, implementing projects.

“I will convey the same problem faced by other agencies to the State Secretary because I think time has come for us to really look at the issue closely," he told reporters after attending the Kapit Division Project Monitoring Meeting (Rural Connectivity) JKR Sarawak and local elected representatives here today.

He shared that the meeting was aimed to gather feedback on the status of the JKR projects, issues regarding their implementation and road coverage in Kapit division.

"We hope to plan a programme to make sure that there is a strategy to link all these roads, all these houses and longhouses in the division,” he said, adding that the project planning would be drafted with the collaboration of the Regional Corridor Development Authority (Recoda), as well as the Public Works Ministry and the Rural and Regional Development Ministry.  

Uggah, who is also the state Infrastructure and Port Development Minister revealed that the Sarawak government has placed the RM193 million Bukit Mabong STOLport project in a ‘keep in view’ status after it was put on hold last year following the state government’s decision that facilities such as road access, power and water supply would need to be brought into the area before the project could proceed.

-- BERNAMA