Strong growth in Infrastructure development

As I have spent most of my working life in the public service, I can see quite clearly that the civil service of today and that of 30 years ago have different features altogether. The State is blessed to have a much more thinking members of the civil service now than in the old days.

The members, after having gone through proper trainings and getting better salaries, enjoy quite a spread of power.  They are not only looking for job security but satisfaction. They are fully aware of the greater challenges ahead that dictate new ways of doing things for greater efficiency and productivity in services.

It was obvious in those that the civil service was very administrative in nature. It was only JKR that appeared to be the workhorse in development while Land and Survey and Forestry departments were the major revenue earners. 

Then JKR has to construct roads, build public buildings, dig drains and do hosts of other government jobs. However, the State has reached the stage of development where 90% of the development projects have got to go through open tender system.  Therefore, JKR has to do the jobs of supervising of all development projects more and more to ensure that the State gets the value for its money.

Basically, JKR must reorganize its job functions. Its structure needs to be reorganized from a pyramid to a plateau as it needs more senior engineers rather than junior ones. The department must ensure that any work being contracted out must be implemented according to specifications; they must be carried out according to contracts with little variations.

Understandably, it takes some time for the department to re-organise itself but re-organise it must in order to face the challenges of the second phase of development, which is expected to be more challenging and magnanimous, as outlined in the new economic model starting from next year.  Of course, the Forestry department has been corporatized with the bulk of the work being taken over by the Forestry Corporation.  The exercise provides a lot of equal salaries based on the formula being used by companies in the private sector.

Looking back into the history of infrastructure development in Sarawak, it used to be a  slow process. Before Merdeka, Sarawak had a kind of road construction program that depended very much on foreign aids mainly from Australian Government under the Colombo plan. Then the only stretch of road was from Kuching to Simanggang (Sri Aman now). 

I remember I had to sit at the back of a Range Rover for my first posting, as a very junior officer, to Simanggang in the early 70s. By the time I reached the town my hair had all became very stiff because of the dust and my body ached all over due to a long travel in rough and dusty road; then the whole stretch of road from Serian was a gravel road. Again, when I had to move from Simanggang to Saratok for another posting, I had to go down to Kuching to board a motor launch for the purpose; then there was no through road from Simanggang to Saratok. The other stretch of road from Kuching was to Bau, a long winding road due to minimum earth work.

Before Merdeka, JKR had only four or five Mechanical Road construction units or MRCUs to construct roads.  Its progress in a year was 60 miles.  With that kind of progress, it would take a century to develop a reasonably good road network in Sarawak. After Merdeka, JKR was directed to expand the road construction sections to 13 MRCUs in order to double the progress. Hence, since 1965 to 1970 Sarawak managed to double the road construction to more than 120 miles a year. The momentum picked up under the Second Malaysia Plan from 1970 – 1975 with an allocation of over RM 800 million as compared to roughly RM350 million under the First Malaysia Plan.

Sarawak had a total length of 650 miles of roads, mainly sub-standard roads, before 1963. Now the State could boast of a total length of more than 30,000KM of roads throughout the State. The first trunk has been able to link Kuching with Sibu and Miri. 
 

The construction of the second trunk road along the long and winding coastline, primarily to open up lands for the development of plantations or estates, started in the 90s. Now the coastal trunk roads pass through Samarahan, Simunjan, Saribas, Saratok all the way to Tanjung Manis. The second phase will eventually connect Tanjung Manis to Mukah all the way to Miri. Then Sarawak will be served by two main roads systems.

The drainage and Irrigation function of JKR had to be handed over to the Federal government in 1966 due to the limited capacity of the department to do the work.  Then it could only do a bit of work in Kabong, Sibuti and Simunjan.  After the Federal takeover drainage and irrigation became a separate department with the position to implement more ambitious programs like the development of Asajaya drainage and irrigation scheme which marked the launching of a proper development of drainage and irrigation program in the State.
 

As more works had to be done to upgrade and further expand the development of the infrastructure, JKR has to play more and more the roles of a management organization as the state moves to a more sophisticated level of development.  The department has to concentrate on planning and preparations of the overall development of the infrastructure in the State. With the policy to develop the capacity of the private sector to become the new engine of growth, a number of  Sarawak owned companies have been able to grow up to undertake major road, water supply and other construction projects since the early 90s.

Obviously, the private sector has developed sufficient capacity to undertake major road construction and other infrastructure development projects that JKR does not have to do them anymore.

Sarawak has reached a stage of development, the development of infrastructure in particular, for JKR to become a construction management of the government. It must assume the primary task to plan together with the central authority like SPU for the construction of roads, airports, ports, water supply and water facilities within the context of development in Sarawak.  More importantly, the department must be able to translate the plans for the construction of the projects into dollars and cents.

Obviously, the department requires more quantity surveyors and bigger units to prepare and document the contracts to be given out to the private sector. The contracts must be done in a transparent manner with tender procedures to done in an open manner. Even today, JKR can be considered as a management organization for multi-billion dollar road construction and other development projects being carried out in the State.  Indisputably, Sarawak has been experiencing a very strong growth in the development of its infrastructure since the midst 80s.

Now Sarawak can boast of good ports in Kuching, Sibu, Tanjung Manis and Kuala Baram and a deep-sea port in Bintulu.  Kuching used to have a port at Tanah Putih but it was small and the turn round time for a boat was more than two hours. A boat had to go all the way up to the bent of the river before it could slowly turn round to berth at the port. It was not the kind of port that Kuching should have. So the State government, as we had been told, decided to build a new port at Senari. The Miri port had to be shifted to Kuala Baram because the previous site at Brighton was too small and Miri river is far too shallow to allow big boats to enter.

Understandably, Tanjung Manis port will eventually become a specialist port to handle food and bio-tech materials and fish products. Sibu port is being developed to become a riverine port to serve the development along the mighty Batang Rajang, which will have different kind of transportation vessels mainly flat bottom boats for shallow draft to carry bulk cargo.  The development of infrastructure also includes works on the construction of a three-tier wharf at Kapit and improvement of those in Song and other smaller towns.

Sarawak, since 1990s, has been working very hard to upgrade and construct new airports to cater for landings by bigger aircrafts. Kuching International airport has become a completely new airport with the capacity to land 747 aircraft.   The airports in Sibu, Miri and Bintulu have been upgraded to take 737 aircrafts; the airport in Bintulu used to be right in the middle of the town before the new one was constructed in 2004.

The airports in Limbang, Mukah and Tanjung Manis all can take Fokker Friendship;  the airport in Tanjung Manis is being built by the State government to take cater for the development of Tanjung Manis as an industrial port. They are getting regular air services now. Airstrips have also been constructed each in Mulu, Bario, Ba’kelalan and Long Semado, in the interiors of the State, to enable the people to have good air services. Long Semado, with the airstrip being constructed on gotong royong by the local people, used to be served by a piper, a one propeller plane in the old days.

Of course, housing was never a strong point in the construction industry until 1996 with the development of Miri housing estates, the first big- scale housing estates to be developed in Sarawak.   Before 1981, housing market was very weak. Then the state had less than ½ million workers and the salary was quite low in housing industry. The industry could only start vigorously quite recently with the workers approaching 1 million coupled with very good rates of interests being offered by local financial institutions for low cost housing schemes.