Published on: Friday, April 24, 2009 |
Kota Kinabalu: Pulau Sipadan moved up to 14th place from 17th spot in the search for seven new wonders of nature being carried out via Internet voting.
Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister, Datuk Masidi Manjun, said Sipadan is now only three spots away from qualifying for the final rounds of voting.
"(But) I am confident that we will be able to achieve our goal to be among the 10 best islands in the world," he said in a text read by Assistant Minister Bolkiah Ismail at the launching of "Vote for Sipadan" campaign at Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS), here, Thursday.
To qualify, he said Sipadan must be among the 11 finalists under the island category in the online competition.
So, to achieve the goal, he said the Ministry is targeting students from public and private institutes of higher learning especially those with e-mail accounts.
At the same time, he said they are also approaching officers in both the State and Federal governments.
He said they have requested that the State and Federal governments inform their agencies and departments to brief their staff on the voting procedure for Sipadan.
Bolkiah said he has been entrusted to exploit the market in the peninsula and to target students and Federal employees.
Next week, he said he will be meeting with Tourism Minister Datuk Dr Ng Yen Yen to discuss the launching of the campaign in the peninsula in a big way.
Nevertheless, he said it would be carried out in phases because his Ministry wants to avoid a situation where voting is high during the initial stage but fizzles out towards the end.
"So, before the voting process is closed, we will conduct a huge campaign," he said.
UMS Vice-Chancellor Datuk Dr Kamaruzaman Ampon said they are aiming to garner up to 90 per cent votes from the school's 17,000 students.
"We are also targeting to get votes from the 4,500 new students," he said.
On other developments, Masidi said for Sabah to win a place among the 11 top islands, every Malaysian with e-mail accounts must support the campaign. He said this is a golden opportunity to put Sipadan Island on the world map as among the wonders of nature.
Sipadan is one of the 261 national and multinational nominees from 222 countries which participated in the New Seven Wonders of Nature search.
It successfully qualified the first stage, the National Qualification, on Dec 31 last year.
It must get through the second stage period from January to July 7 this year.
