I write in response to the Star article ‘Miri now a modern riverside city with high-class hotels and malls’ that was published on April 4 2011. I was shocked by the factual inaccuracies regarding the road conditions in the article.

First, I would like to address the mention of the ‘super-smooth roads’. The roads around Miri, and especially around the Curtin university campus are far from smooth. The road is broken at numerous places and driving on it will test any vehicle’s suspension system.

It’s little wonder that four-wheel drive vehicles are still selling like hotcakes in the city. The writer also fails to acknowledge the high number of accidents on Miri roads. I encounter wreckage on the roadside on an alarmingly high frequency.

Second, is the blatant lie of the four-lane roads that supposedly connect the town to the outskirts of Bandar Baru Permyjaya and Senadin. There are no four lane roads. The roads run 2 lane for each way at best.

What the writer seems to be oblivious of is the fact that the roads bottleneck into one lane as they reach further into the outskirts. This is known to cause massive jams in the morning and in the evenings when entering and exiting Bandar Baru Permyjaya.

Despite the traffic jams being a problem in the area for years, nothing has been done to correct the situation. In fact, more houses are being built in the already congested area, which is bound to make the situation much, much worse.

I love Miri for its charm and its history. But I cannot stand by while Star distorts the truth to pander to their political masters. The roads in Miri are in need of fixing and simply glossing over those facts in the build up to an election is going to do us residents of Miri no favours at all.