City Hall tackles Luyang drain issue
Published on: Wednesday, January 26, 2022
By: Sidney Skinner
.jpg "City Hall tackles Luyang drain issue")
A City Hall contractor watches as his worker dismantles the driveway to access the drain below.
City Hall is upgrading a roadside drain in Taman Southern, Luyang, in the hope of preventing water from stagnating inside this structure.A spokesman for the agency’s Engineering Department (ED) said the work involved restoring the gradient, as well as dealing with any structural irregularities related to the drain.
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“A concrete driveway was fashioned over one section of the structure,” he said on January 25.
“The home-owner who did this may have inadvertently impeded the flow of the water inside as one part of the driveway eats into the space of the drain below.”
On top of remedying this problem, the spokesman said the agency’s contractor has also been asked to remove any concrete which may have fallen to the base of the structure when the renovation was made.
“The individual began attending to the drain on Saturday and should be done before the Chinese New Year public holidays, if not sooner.
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The spokesman said City Hall had conducted a preliminary check on the drainage in Taman Southern.
“A lot of settlement has taken place in the area since the housing drains were first built years ago.
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“This has impeded the flow of water inside these structures. Because of this, ponding occurs in some drains.
“The water vegetation tends to thrive in these sections.”
The agency has been periodically arranging to have the front-yard drains in the neighbourhood cleared, according to him.
A spokesman for City Hall’s Landscaping Department (LD) said the government concessionaire was responsible for maintaining the drains along the housing roads, while the agency tended to the ones behind residences there.
The contractor drills down to the bottom of the drain to begin dealing with the gradient.
The former were cleaned according to a fixed schedule, with the same being done to the latter once every three months, according to him.
“The drains were most recently unclogged, including removing the silt and water vegetation inside, on December 10,” he said.
“We will call on the management to step up the maintenance efforts so that those staying here get some relief from the drainage woes they have been experiencing.”
The ED stepped in to improve the flow of water in the drain, after the agency’s Health and Environment Department (HED) detected an irregularity involving a driveway in this part of the neighbourhood last month.
A HED spokeswoman said inspectors with the Department’s Vector Control Division noted the presence of an “struktur haram (illegal structure)” built over a section of drain in Lorong Unta 11.
“At the time, our staff had been verifying a claim that Aedes mosquitoes might have made a habitat in the structure,” she said.
“They did find the insect’s larvae in the water but, thankfully, also observed that there were fish swimming about here.”
She explained that the latter were apparently feeding on the former, so a decision was made to hold off on “larvaciding” the Luyang drain.
The spokeswoman said officers from its LD and the Kota Kinabalu Health Office, as well as the concessionaire’s representatives, were also present during the inspection carried out on December 10.
“LD staff confirmed that the level of the water inside the drain was high and that the structure was in need of maintenance.
“The concessionaire’s staff cleaned the structure there and then as it fell under the company’s jurisdiction.
“While trying to ascertain why the run-off was not flowing away properly, our Vector staff spotted the obstruction beneath the drive-way.”
The spokeswoman said the address of the house, where this renovation had been made, was forwarded to City Hall’s Building Control Department and the ED.
When asked about the month-plus delay in verifying this claim, a spokesman for the former declined to comment.
He was also unable to establish whether the modification to the drive-way could be considered an ‘illegal structure’.
“One of our officers has gone to the area and we are still looking over his findings,” he said.
We are trying to determine whether a building plan was submitted to us prior to the renovation.”
RUBIATUL of Luyang bemoaned the foul smell coming from the direction of her front-yard drain in Taman Southern.
“I have to keep most of my doors and windows closed to prevent the stench from getting in,” she said.
“I also fear that the water in the drain has become a breeding ground for mosquitoes as I have seen many of these insects buzzing about my home.”
Rubiatul has noticed, for some time, that the water inside the drain does not recede even when the weather gets hot.
“Two years ago, seven of us staying here – including myself – came down with dengue fever.”
“I hope the local authorities will act before there is another dengue outbreak in the neighbourhood.”
She said she had related her concerns to City Hall more than once last year but, so far, her drainage woes still persisted.
Rubiatul bemoaned the lack of maintenance carried out on the drains in Taman Southern, saying that thick weeds had formed in many of them.
“I shared my frustrations about the stagnant water and mosquitoes with one of my neighbours.
“He told me that City Hall had started refurbishing the neighbourhood drains several years ago but had left the work half done as the authority had run out of funds to complete the work.”
The LD spokesman refuted the suggestion that the agency had been slow in cleaning the drain near the complainant’s house.
He said a check of the agency’s records showed that it received two reports about the clogged drain on Lorong Unta 11: the first on July 23, the second on December 5.
“Our staff conducted a site-inspection on these occasions, confirming that the drain was full in each instance,” he said.
“The government concessionaire was alerted about the rate-payer’s grievance, after both checks, and urged to attend to the drain as soon as possible.”
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