In response to Local Government Minister Dr Sim Kui Hian’s promise that the upgrading and renovation of Lundu Hospital will be a top priority in the state, I then urge the Barisan Nasional government to really act upon their promises to address the need for better healthcare facilities and services in the state and not just dish out election promises year after year just to give false hope and mislead the public.

It is only fair for the public that a definite timeline be given to the government to implement such promises, if not it will continue to remain as just an empty promise and election candy every other year.

As much as I welcome the effort to address the need for Lundu Hospital to be rebuilt in the state, the ruling government should also be reminded of other promises that was made including the new Sri Aman Hospital and multi-level car park in Sarawak General Hospital (SGH) which has been delayed for so many years.

The long awaited multi-layer carpark for SGH is a promise made 10 years ago and after a total of five elections later, both general elections and state elections combined, not even a single groundbreaking ceremony been held until now. The said project has been used as an election candy year after year but until now all it has remain are promises.

In a parliamentary reply, technically the project in principle has been approved by the ministry on Nov 22, 2013. Even by today’s standard, for a promised made 10 years ago and only to be approved in 2013 is a very long delay. Promise after promises have been made to the people about the commencement dates since 2014, but yet until now the construction of the project is still nowhere to be seen.

The proposed RM378 million project was said to be based on the Public Private Partnership-BLMT model (PPP-BLMT), construction includes a daycare centre block (pusat-rawatan harian), pathology lab, blood bank, two car park complexes and a Medi-hotel.

Since the delay is due to funding and high cost including the additional RM26 million in Goods and Services Tax (GST) charges as claimed by Dr Sim himself, I would then suggest that they concentrate on building the car park itself first before the construction of the other facilities to address the acute need for parking spaces first.

According to the Kuching City Councils, the standard measurement for a parking bay in a multi-storey car park building is 2.5 metres width and 5 metres length. Therefore, the surface area of a parking bay is 12.5 m².

For 1,750 parking bays, the total surface area is thus 21,875 m².

Given another equal surface area for the driveway within the building, the total surface area for the said multi-storey car park is thus 43,750 m².

The average costs of building a multi-storey carpark building in Malaysia is RM700 per m².

Therefore, the costs for the 1,750 parking bay multi-storey car park building is thus RM30.6 million. Given another 15 percent for contingency expenses, it will cost at most RM35 million only in comparison to the total cost of RM378 million.

Lack of parking space is a critical issue

As such the cost needed should be significantly less if we were to purely focus on just building the car park. The lack of parking space is a critical issue which has plagued the Sarawak public for years but yet that need in the biggest hospital in Sarawak is still not addressed.

I would also suggest that the government release the construction plans as well as traffic diversions plans for the convenience of the public especially during the period of construction. I would suggest parking facilities be allocated at the nearby Civic Centre and free shuttle services back and forth to be provided during the construction of the car park.

With that, I would give the government a definite timeline of one more year for the construction of the car park. I believe we have been made to wait for so long already and there is a strong need to keep the government accountable to their promises if not it will just continue to remain as just an empty promise and election candy every other year.

The minister owes it to people of Sarawak for a promise which seems to take forever to be fulfilled.

KELVIN YII is a special assistant to Stampin MP Julian Tan.