Miri-Marudi road a boon for folk in interior of Miri division

MIRI: The 43.2km Miri-Marudi road, which was resurfaced by the military three years ago, has been a boon for the folk in the interior of the Miri Division in Sarawak.
Now it just takes an hour to get to Miri City from Kuala Baram by car as compared to the three-hour journey by boat. Now most of the people living upstream no longer depend on the Baram River for transportation purposes.
There is more good news for them as the Sarawak government is now upgrading the road for better comfort for its users.
The drastic change can be seen at the Kuala Baram Jetty in Senadin here which used to be a hive of activity with express boats plying every two hours to serve residents of Long Lama and Long Banga, but now is a pale shadow of its former self and serves more as a platform for fishing for the locals.
Johny Sangin, 42, an angler met at the jetty, said people in Marudi now preferred to use the road.
"No more headaches, before by boat it used to take three hours but now just an hour," he said.
Another resident, Daniel Igan, 30, concurred, saying the road had made life much easier for the people in the interior.
He said things had changed so much since the road became available that he sometimes missed the hustle and bustle at the jetty.
Datuk Lee Kim Shin, who has been the assemblyman for Senadin since 1996, said the road had been around for a long time but back then it was just a timber track.
"Then from Marudi to Miri it took almost four hours and that too by four-wheel drive, cars cannot make the trip," he said, adding that following complaints by the locals, the military undertook the task under its Jiwa Murni programme to make it car-friendly.
"Now it is being upgraded by the state government, it will be an end to potholes and damage caused by heavy vehicles," he said.
He added that not only that, attention was being given to the road system in the area and that in 2013, the dual carriageway from Pujut 7 to the ASEAN Bridge costing RM115 was completed.
In the 11th Sarawak State Election this Saturday, Lee (BN-SUPP) is again defending the Senadin seat.
His opponents are DAP's Dr Bob Baru Langub and Philemon John Edan, from PBDS Baru. — Bernama