THE government should consider providing incentive packages, in whatever form, for Sabah tourist operators and all the related industries following the recent murder-Kidnap incident at Pom Pom Island off Semporna.
Api-Api assemblywoman Christina Liew said the infamous incident had made world headline news, while the Taiwan government and some other countries had issued travel alert to their citizens not to visit Sabah for the time being.
She said the state government’s target of 3.4 million tourist arrivals and RM6.277 in receipts for 2014 was not logical as it was too high, especially with the negative response from the other countries towards Sabah.
“This is a hard fact and reality we must accept, and deal with it and how to find a long term solution.
“We are not here to damage the image of Sabah tourism. For example, on November 3, 2013 in Banggi, Kudat, a fishing boat was robbed. The robbers were armed with machine guns. They opened fire on the fishing boat, pulled the fishing boat to the deep sea with more than 15 fishermen on board. The robbers asked for RM50,000. The ship owner paid the ransom before the ship and the fishermen on board were released,” she said when debating on the State Budget 2014 at State Assembly sitting yesterday.
Liew said the incident at Pom Pom Island of Semporna would definitely affect the related sectors such as hotels, restaurants, pubs, transportation, food and drink, local cultural artistes, tourist guides and souvenir shops.
She stressed that the government needed to consider incentive packages, in whatever form, to tie over the hardship they may have to bear due to the incident that brings adverse worldwide publicity.
“We hope the security issues in the East Coast can be resolved soon and more security personnel can be stationed in the tourist hotspots (islands) in the east coast and before we further promote to the world that these places are safe. We need to restore the confidence of tourists in the security of our tourism industry.
“After all we do have lovely islands and mountain in the West Coast and in the interior too. What happened at Pom-Pom Island is only an isolated case,” she said.
Liew believed that following the murder-kidnap incident it would be a great challenge to the tourism authority to find ways to market Sabah tourism industry to the world.
“It requires cooperation from all sectors, including the security council, defence, police and so on, in rebuilding the image and confidence in our country’s security, in taking care of the safety of tourists,” she said.
The assemblywoman meanwhile was disappointed that the Land and Survey Department was not accorded the four-star rating in the Auditor General’s accountability index, like the rest of the eight departments for 2012.
She said the Land and Survey Department had been allocated RM91,653,513 in the 2014 Budget, compared with RM85,579,080 in 2013, with an increase of RM6,074,430 or seven per cent.
“We hope with the increase in allocation, the department’s services to the public will be improved accordingly. We hope that land related problems faced by the people and the investors will be resolved speedily with the additional funds in 2014.
“It is hoped that the department’s backlog will be resolved in 2014 and the department obtains a four-star rating by the Auditor General’s accountability index for year 2013,” she said.