LET’S DO IT TOGETHER: Awang Tengah (fourth left) together with other VIPs jointly press a button to launch the four-in-one events yesterday. — Photo Muhd Rais Sanusi
KOTA SAMARAHAN: If everything goes as planned, residents in Pending and surrounding areas will get to enjoy an environment which has lesser noise and air pollution in the next two to three years.
This follows the government’s aim of seeing some of the existing timber-based and food-processing factories in the area shift operations to Samarahan Industrial Estate.
The total number of such factories currently operating in Pending is not immediately known, but the number may not be small since Pending and Bintawa are among the first few areas in the state to have industrial estates.
Minister of Industrial Development Datuk Amar Awang Tengah Ali Hassan said Samarahan Industrial Estate, which is situated behind Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) and next to Kampung Baru, was being expanded to accommodate the new factories.
“We are in the process of expanding the Samarahan Industrial Estate from 240 to 300 acres. Once completed, furniture and other wood-based factories now operating in Pending can gradually relocate to that side,” he told reporters after representing Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud to launch Exploring Opportunities in Trade and Industries Sector Programme for Samarahan Division and the state-level Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) Week yesterday.
He said the expansion work was nearing completion, but could not state for certain when the factories could start moving in.
“The government planned to relocate the current factories from Pending as some of them are too close to residential areas.”
Earlier, in his speech, Awang Tengah, who is also Second Resource Planning and Environment Minister, said the government had placed a lot of emphasis on the development of industrial estates in order to encourage more locals to be involved in small-and-medium scale enterprises (SMEs).
He said SMEs was important as it had contributed tremendously towards the socio-economic growth of the state and country as a whole.
On a related matter, he said based on statistics from the Malaysian Investment Development Authority (Mida), because of the Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy (SCORE), Sarawak managed to attract RM8.17 billion in new investments in 2011, well above Penang (RM4.48 billion) and Selangor (4.38 billion).
He added that since the implementation of SCORE in 2008, it had thus far attracted investments totalling nearly RM30 billion from 17 projects.
These investments would not only create employment opportunities but would also spur lots of business opportunities in the downstream industries, including the food and services industries.
“SCORE alone will create plenty of opportunities, and it is up to the people to explore them.”