COMMENT In Parts 2 to 5 of this series, I’ve highlighted the seriousness of the urban-rural divide in Sarawak. Now I want to shift gears and look at some possible solutions to narrow this urban-rural divide.

We often hear about how Sarawak receives a disproportionate amount of the government’s development expenditure partly because of the size and the relatively backwardness of the state, especially in terms of infrastructure such as roads, electricity and water supply.

For example, the allocation for Sarawak by the federal government under the 10th Malaysia Plan was RM19 billion. Under the 11th Malaysia Plan, the state government has requested for RM35 billion, 64 percent of which will be spent on rural development projects such as water, electricity, roads, school, clinics and agricultural programmes.

But despite these large amounts of development expenditure allocated to Sarawak, many people do not see the impact on the ground, prompting this letter writer to ask the following question: “In the last five years that was the 10MP, how much development was felt by rural Sarawakians?”

Part of the reason why this expenditure is not felt ‘on the ground’ is its slow implementation. For example, out of the 2,643 projects approved for implementation under the 10th MP, only 1,467 or 55.5 percent had been completed by the middle of 2015.

One cannot ignore the possibility that the lack of political competition leading to the lack of urgency is also an important explanatory factor as to the slow implementation of infrastructure projects in rural Sarawak...