Road maintenance - coming of age in Sabah

Sabah is one of the thirteen states of the federation of Malaysia and covers 80,000 square kilometres of the northern part of the island of borneo. It has a public road network of about 5,000 kilometres of federal and state roads of which about one third are sealed. The responsibility for maintenance of the road network rests with the Sabah Public Works Department, and the work is financed by federal funds as regards federal (trunk) roads and by a combination of state funds and federal grants as regards state (district, feeder and urban) roads. This paper describes the background for the four- year road maintenance and upgrading programmes presently being implemented in sabah, the progress achieved and the problems encountered during the first two and one half years, and the work planned for the remaining period. The capital costs involved in the programmes (procurement of additional maintenance equipment, design, construction and supervision of rehabilitation works, and technical support services to the department) are provided by the federal government while the recurrent costs are provided through the normal annual allocations for maintenance of roads and bridges. The foreign currency component of the capital costs is provided by the ibrd as part of the third Malaysia highway project loan (a).