Suggesting to Kota Sa­ma­ra­han Mu­nic­i­pal Coun­cil (MPKS) to be strict with our local hawkers in Tambirat, Samarahan

I have recently suggested to Kota Sa­ma­ra­han Mu­nic­i­pal Coun­cil (MPKS) to em­u­late Sibu Mu­nic­i­pal Coun­cil (SMC) measures by re­vok­ing the li­cence of traders who have failed to open their shops for busi­ness for days.This is because the ac­tions of such traders are akin to rob­bing the liveli­hood of those who were keen to op­er­ate but un­able to se­cure a li­cence due to the un­avail­abil­ity of trad­ing spa­ces. We have to be strict and must discipline them. Fol­low the SMC way where those who have trad­ing li­cences must open up shop al­most ev­ery day.

I think if these traders only open shop ac­cord­ing to sea­son, re­voke their trad­ing li­cences and if we refer  to the reg­u­la­tion im­ple­mented by SMC at its Sun­day Mar­ket near Jalan In­dah, those li­censed hawk­ers who have been al­lo­cated trad­ing space risk hav­ing their per­mits re­voked if they fail to turn up to trade for more than two days with­out pro­vid­ing the coun­cil with valid rea­sons. As such, their va­cated trad­ing space would then be made avail­able to oth­ers who had ap­plied for the trad­ing lots.

I have mentioned this dur­ing the earth-break­ing cer­e­mony for the new Kam­pung Tam­bi­rat Hawker Cen­tre last Sunday and I have also warned that the new RM7-mil­lion cen­tre could end up look­ing dull and un­de­r­oc­cu­pied if not all of the tak­enup lots were to open for busi­ness daily. We must remember that when cus­tomers or vis­i­tors come and see this, they would tell oth­ers what they saw and news of the dull and un­oc­cu­pied Kam­pung Tam­bi­rat Hawker Cen­tre would spread, giv­ing a bad im­pres­sion of it.

There­fore we have to be strict. If a trader does not open shop for more than five days in a row with­out valid rea­sons, re­voke his trad­ing li­cence. There are other traders who are keen to open shop there; bet­ter give them that op­por­tu­nity. I hope the construction of the Kam­pung Tam­bi­rat Hawker Cen­trewill be­gin im­me­di­ately and it is ex­pected to be com­pleted within 12 months. Once com­pleted, the facility would be un­der the purview of MPKS and have at least 80 trad­ing lots.

The con­struc­tion of the centre was orig­i­nally planned to start in the mid­dle of this year but had to be de­layed due to the Covid-19 pan­demic. This is one of sev­eral projects un­der the In­te­grated Re­gional Sarawak De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­ity (IRSDA) be­ing de­vel­oped in Asajaya, par­tic­u­larly Kam­pung Tam­bi­rat – the big­gest vil­lage in Asajaya. I had also high­lighted the RM31-mil­lion Tam­bi­rat Wa­ter­front project which will be­gin con­struc­tion soon, to­gether with the RM35-mil­lion 900m-em­bank­ment project along the Batang Sa­ma­ra­han river­bank in Kam­pung Tam­bi­rat. Both projects which were an­nounced last year are cur­rently in the ten­der process and should be com­pleted within 24 months once con­struc­tion begins, he added.