Rakan Sarawak Year 1998

Panel Speakers at the IWT Seminar

As our roads are getting more congested by the day, planners are seriously looking into rivers as a viable alternative means or transportation. Sarawak's inland waterway network comprise of 55 major river systems with a total combined length of about 5000 km; navigable!

Speaking at the official opening of the National Seminar on Inland Water Transport in Kuching, the Deputy Prime Minister, YAB Dato' Seri Abdullah Haji Ahmad Badawi urged Sarawak to take advantage of its vast number of rivers as a role model for other states in Malaysia to bring more benefit of development to the people in remote areas.

"These 'water highways' should be tapped not only to bring development to the peoples in the interior but also to provide them with good health care, clean water, electricity and education."

Haji Salleh Haji Sulaiman, the Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Infrastructure Development and Communications said in his introductory presentation at the seminar that "The aim should be to put the heart back into the Sarawak River and put the River at the heart of an integrated transport system of the next century."

In view of its vast potential, the government has allocated a sum of RM38.1 million under the 7th Malaysia Plan for the improvement and upgrading of passenger and cargo facilities to cater for Inland Water Transport in Sarawak.

There is now a strong realisation that with the increase in economic activities such as moving large volume of cargoes from plantations and agricultural estates in the upper reaches of the rivers to ports and towns, river transport could be the alternative means to act as a vital interface with other modes of transport.