KANGAR: About 20 traders at the Dataran 350 here ‘lost’ their goods either to thieves or to the weather in the chaos which ensued when last night’s strong winds and heavy rains brought down their tents.
Worse still, some of the traders’ earnings from sales conducted over the past few days in conjunction with Aidiladha celebration, were also believed to have been stolen by the pilferers.
Perfume and clothes trader Hazdi Zairi Abd Razak, 30, told Bernama here today that there was no time to save his goods during the emergency and he believed they may have been stolen by unscrupulous individuals, while his colleague Nordin Harun, 53, from Kuala Perlis, said he suffered about RM15,000 in losses when clothes and children’s toys from his stall were damaged by the rains and winds.
Nordin recalled that he was attending to a customer last night at about 8pm, when all of a sudden, gusts of strong winds and heavy rains hit the area.
Checks with other traders at the square found about 20 of them suffered losses following the bad weather, reported to have been caused by the tail end of Typhoon Lekima.
Meanwhile, the Social Welfare Department and the Malaysian Civil Defence Force have begun assessments of the damage and losses incurred.
It is understood that scores of houses and business premises were damaged, while road accidents also occurred - fortunately, no loss of life has been reported thus far, according to state police chief SAC Noor Mushar Mohamad. — Bernama
