SANDAKAN: Elopura Assemblyman Calvin Chong expressed regret over water supply which still tastes salty.
“Although some parties from the Sabah Water Department (SWD) claim that the gates of the Segaliud Water Treatment Plant have been repaired and the river water has stopped flowing to the dam since last month, the public still feel that the supplied water supply is salty.
“Due to the inefficiency of the Department’s management, the people have been paying the monthly bill for the salty water supply for almost half a year,” he said.
Calvin said the Department needed to use more effective and aggressive methods to solve the salty water problem including flowing clean water supply to the Segaliud Water Treatment Plant.
He said the Department needed to check the salinity level every hour to ensure it really went down to the lowest level.
“They need to act more quickly to prevent clean water from mixing with salt water which affects the quality of the water supply to the people of Sandakan,” Calvin said.
In addition, he regretted the negligence of the Department because it caused the people of Sandakan to drink salty water.
The Department did not seem to have taken any action, instead the people were still suffering because of its inefficiency, he said.
“Drinking salty water resulted in many side effects such as skin diseases and some other chronic diseases such as high blood pressure and affect the kidneys. Until now, the Department still failed to publicly apologise to the people,” said Calvin.
He said it was impossible to achieve the salinity of the Sandakan water source from 750ppm, (liquid concentration) now to 50ppm which was safe to drink within a month.
He had previously targeted 10,000 signatures for the SWD Director to resign.
He said, so far, his party had collected about 500 signatures.
He hoped the public would continue to support him for a complete change in the Water Department.
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