excuse for TAED -Tg Aru great as water homestay hub

Tg Aru great as water homestay hub

Published on: Monday, December 15, 2014

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TANJUNG ARU: The water village here has great potential as a homestay hub, instead of some presently being thronged by migrant renters, as owners see the future potential of tourism to make more money with the Tanjung Aru Eco-Development (TAED) project attraction nearby. Tourism can do for Tanjung Aru to clear off undesirable problematic migrants what the booming industry did to clear out prostitution from some of Sabah's hotels like Kota Kinabalu's Sea View Hotel which was more of a dedicated brothel in the past. As hoteliers find that tourists fill rooms better than prostitutes and their clients, they prefer to straighten out their business.
The manager of Casuarina Hotel here testified in court recently that a house here that is the focus of a property cheating case trial, was also once rented by the hotel for business accommodation purpose. This reflects the potential of homes here for tourism accommodation.
The TAED is expected to boost the Tanjung Aru Lama and Baru village water house plots of land including those on Native Title from RM30,000 twenty years ago to more than four-fold to ten-fold depending on location and connection to land (if the government has no plans to acquire or resettle such home dwellers).
There are opportunities for water village home owners to rent rooms to tourists desirous of living like a local in a water village house without paying what tourists are paying to stay in high class resorts on Gaya Islands. Admittedly some necessary home renovations are needed for tourists' health and safety like proper sanitation and fire-fighting equipment.
Those who are more entrepreneurial could own their own approved boat with lifejackets to ferry tourists to the offshore islands or even to the city centre seaside shopping malls if permitted to land at available jetty instead of at Jesselton Point.
This also goes for those villagers off shore on Gaya Island like Kampung Gaya. For example, it is reported in the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Illegal Immigrants in Sabah Report in page 199 reports that Saimah binti Salam, the female village head of Kampung Gaya, said that more than 4,000 Bajau Laut and Suluk enjoy piped water and electricity supply which they could exploit to provide homestay to tourists that throng the backpackers lodges which sometimes do not have vacancies during peak seasons.
Datuk Edward Yong Oui Fah, when asked at a TAED briefing for politicians supposedly across the political divide in the recent pass, revealed that from his intimate knowledge of his constituents as the Tanjung Aru Assemblyman, most of the younger generations of Gaya Islanders prefer to move out elsewhere to live and work.
On saving and preserving free open access Tanjung Aru's Rugby field next to the Terminal Two of the Kota Kinabalu International Airport, Yong opined that he knew that only few wanted to use the field as it is for, and the future trend is to use facilities at the Likas Sports Complex. The site is slated for a convention centre hotel under the TAED.
The TAED is also expected to increase the desirability of old strata housing like the rental Tanjung Aru Low-Cost Flats for workers to the Waikiki Condominium units that were once an abandoned project, rescued by a banking group, and now saddled with an outstanding management fee arrears of some RM795,000 not collected by the property manager.
Datuk Yap Pak Leong, a Waikiki unit owner, was recently elected to the committee to form its first management corporation, which would be hard pressed to perform to manage the strata housing and collect the management fees, without any improvement to the state's strata housing laws, left in doldrums for years.
This will also affect investments decisions on TAED strata properties for sale in future if still no progress could be made since the promise of the last Attorney-General to move forward with the development of strata title laws and management standards as another year draws to a close.
Meanwhile, the year-end move to force Air Asia to shift from Terminal Two to Terminal One of the Kota Kinabalu International Airport (KKIA) could also force a developer of the piece of land between the Tanjung Aru Plaza and the river behind the Tanjung Aru Police Station to rethink its development design plan of building more shops with offices on top.
Initially it was proposed that the shops would serve as a food and beverage hub for airport travellers faced with the Spartan choice offerings of food and beverages at Terminal Two that the traffic parking congested Tanjung Aru Plaza, hotels and Tanjung Aru township could not offer to visitors pending the completion of the TAED retail joints as well as the slow progress in the Aeropod retail hub project that is expected to corner the bulk of KKIA transient eaters and shoppers.
With the TAED, the offices would be in greater demand in the shorter term pending the glut of offices and SOVOs by Aeropod project under S P Setia, as some people love working nearer to a world class development with park, beach, library and schools nearby.
The retail business environment in Tanjung Aru is falling as sluggish with the exception of low-pricing strategy by some provision stores with one specialising in wholesale supplies to outstation outlets, and notably a supermarket that draws shoppers from other locations for certain household items.