Bintulu: DAP Sarawak chairman Chong Chieng Jen has slammed the Sarawak government for pouring billions into “low-return projects” like the RM6 billion Autonomous Rapid Transit (ART) system while neglecting the state’s worsening healthcare crisis.
Instead, Chong urged the government to redirect its spending towards a bold, people-first idea – building state-owned private hospitals that charge public hospital rates for Sarawakians.
“Instead of spending billions on ART project, the state should be saving lives. With RM6 billion, the state government could build five major hospitals, also cover its operational costs for five years, including employing sufficient doctors and nursing staffs and providing the necessary medical equipment and medicine,” he said at the DAP Sarawak 2025 Annual Convention in Bintulu today.
Chong, who is also Padungan assemblyman and Stampin MP, said the proposal echoes DAP Sarawak’s earlier 2015 call for state-owned private schools using English as the medium of instruction – an idea once mocked by SUPP leaders but later adopted by the state government, where, after 10 years, a few such schools have been built by the State Government.
He also hit back at SUPP president Datuk Seri Dr Sim Kui Hian, who recently complained that Sarawak’s healthcare is under-staffed and needed RM17 billion to upgrade and repair.
“This has been a 50-year-old problem,” Chong said. “If it were so easy, GPS’s own Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Fadillah Yusof would have fixed it by now. The truth is, SUPP keeps complaining but offers no real solution.”
