Sabah allows construction, maintenance, forestry sectors to operate from today

KOTA KINABALU, May 8  -- The Sabah government has allowed the construction, maintenance and forestry sectors to resume operations under the Conditional Movement Control Order (CMCO), beginning today.

Sabah Chief Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal said construction activities allowed to operate include construction of buildings, infrastructure, public facilities, landscaping and other construction sectors.

He said for the maintenance sector, repairs and upkeep of infrastructure, buildings, public facilities, landscapes, grass-cutting, utility plants, cleaning drains, sewerage, water pipelines and so on would be allowed.

“Activities related to the networks and support services of the construction and maintenance sectors that cover sand and stone quarries, cement factories and clinkers, hill-cutting, land levelling, hardware stores, among others will also be operating,” he said in his statement today.

Yesterday the Sabah government decided to implement the CMCO step by step, especially in opening the state’s economic sector.

This effectively means any conditional lifting as stated before is retracted and automatically cancelled, he said.

For the forestry sector, upstream activities like forest restoration, silviculture, production and transportation of forest products and other forestry activities would be allowed to operate.

“Downstream activities involving sawmills, veneer and plywood factories, furniture industry, finger joint and other wood-based processing plants are also permitted to reopen.

 Also allowed to resume operations were networks and support services for upstream and downstream forestry activities such as land and sea transport logistics, warehouses, domestic retail as well as imports and exports,” he said.

-- BERNAMA