I CAN’T COPE, RANAU’S TOO BIG, DIVIDE IT - SAYS RANAU MP SIRINGAN GUBAT

I can’t cope, Ranau’s too big, says Sabah MP

Dominic Legeh

March 24, 2011 A frustrated Barisan Nasional parliamentarian in Sabah wants his constituency re-delineated so that villagers can enjoy a fairer distribution of allocations.

KOTA KINABALU: Ranau MP Siringan Gubat has finally thrown in the towel and wants the Election Commission (EC) to divide his constituency into two parliamentary segments.

He also wants the EC to add another state constituency to make it four from the current three simply because he cannot cope with the workload.

Siringan said his constituency is too big for him to handle alone and should be re-delineated.

“Based on these facts, it is rather hard and impossible for an MP to visit the whole 213 villages even once in a year.

“I have an MP been for years and have tried to visit more of these villages, but out of the 213 I had only visited 129 of them…” he said.

Gubat said that with the current parliamentary term expected to end soon, “there are still 100 villages I have yet visited.”

Siringan justified the need for the extra parliamentary and state assembly seat.

He said for nearly half of the year the MPs would be attending Parliament and had little time to attend to or visit all their constitiuents.

Fairer distribution

By dividing the constituency, he said, the people in Ranau would enjoy a much fairer distribution of allocation for the implementation of rural development projects.

The geographical size of Ranau and the increase in its population had left it far behind in terms of basic development, he said.

The MP admitted that district administration and management could not cope.

“Ranau parliamentary constituency area is 3,555.9 square kilometres, about 4.5 times bigger than the state of Perlis and also much wider than Malacca,” he said during a motion of thanks to the Yang Dipertuan Agong’s opening address in the Dewan Rakyat recently.

The constituency has 213 registered villages that are managed by a village development and security committees (JKKK) and village heads.

Most of the traditional villages are spread out and lack good access roads. Some can only be reached via boats.

According to him the population of the constituency has also increased. Based on the 2010 census the population gone up by 24,947 people from 70,685 in 2000.

Siringan said the EC record showed that there were 30,810 voters.

Of the state constituencies under his care, Kundasang has 9,639 voters, Keranaan 11,087 voters and Paginatan, 10,084.