Labuan: Kampong Patau-Patau Dua which serves as a showcase of Labuan's old charm and is encouraged as a spot for tourists to visit has slipped into a dangerous and sorry state.Negligence in maintenance of the village's infrastructure has resulted in some of the wooden walkways rotting away and eye-sore sights such as broken water pipeline repaired with sub-standards workmanship can be clearly seen.There had been several incidents of residents becoming victims of planks giving way and trapping their legs.
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In an incident last year, a resident sustained a cut on the thigh when the plank broke under pressure of his weight.According to the PKR Chairman here, Simsudin Sidek, in the latest incident happened last Wednesday afternoon when officials from Labuan Corporation together with others were inspecting a walkway and it suddenly collapsed.
"Fortunately no one was hurt but the incident caused scores residing in the village to use a detour to access their homes. "The collapsed walkway is the main access to the village from the road and normally used by students living in the area.
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There are about 90 houses in the village," he said.He said the embarrassing incident could have been avoided by the local authority if it had seriously taken up the pleas of the residents to upgrade the walkways.
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"Action was only taken at the last minute. Lack of funding is no excuse since the FT Ministry is allocated funds for rural development projects and the government had declared that rural development was equally important as urban development."So, where have all these funds gone to," asked Simsudin.
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He added that based on feedback from the villagers, a section of the walkway was upgraded with a concrete structure but this was good news only for a while. After sometimes, the upgraded section became a roller-coaster."He said the water village was like a heritage site and deserves better facilities.