It is so great news to locals in Kimanis, Papar, located nearly 50KM from KK, where Petronas is progressing in building up new Oil&Gas terminals. The project, so called Sabah Oil&Gas Terminals(SOGT) is under construction and expected to complete by end of this year. The plant would be tied up with Sabah/Sarawak Gas Pipeline(SSGP) project that would supplied most of the sources to Sabah.
The Kimanis area would be flooded with many new plants to cater the needs of the whole area, especially on the maintenance&operation requirement, coupled with new business or services, as what happened to Kerteh area in Terengganu in early 90s.
The other big project under going is Kimanis Power Plant(KPP) located adjacent to SOGT plant, where it would give sufficient supply of power to Kimanis area and up to KK.
Those projects, so far has given abundant job opportunities to the locals and Sabahans people mainly from Labuan. The manpower sources from Labuan is required as they have done another construction work under Petronas in MegaMethanol Plant which is the biggest methanol plant in Asia Pacific.The manpower also coming from Indonesia and South Philipines thus give us the opportunity to learn more language ascent apart from Bahasa Melayu. 'Bajau' and 'Suluk' dialects are the common heard among workers in construction site. 'Brunei' dialect is also found as the surrounding area of Kg Lanas, where the plant is located, is the home of 'Orang Brunei' in Sabah.
However, sometimes because of this multi language could create some disturbing stirs at site as the main contractor for this project is Samsung Engineering, with Korean language and the workers with local dialects. In effort to ease the situation is by employing site supervisors among locals who those could speak those dialects and abit of English.
today, the impact of this new development to the surrounding could be witnessed by the increasing cost of living. The rental rate of housing is increasing rapidly. The price of land is also trippled by value. The number of new restaurant is increasing and flourishing around the area. If you used to be here and always brought back 'ikan bilis' along the road, you could be surprised by the selling price today!
Having said that, the traditional way of life is still maintained with Islamic value to welcome all workers from around the globe to work here in Kimanis.The hope of 'good investment' from this projects to the locals is still under way and maybe Petronas could learn something from what had happened to Kerteh and try to do the right way for Kimanis.
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