Bintulu Member of Parliament Dato' Seri Tiong King Sing identified the police, local authority, the voluntary vigilante corp (Rela) and area neighbourhood watch committees (RTs) as among the organisations that could curb any socially-unacceptable activities from taking their roots and to disrupt the peaceful and harmonious atmosphere here.

"The RTs, Rela and Police must come up together to clean up the mess (the situation), beforethe situation gets worse," he told reporters here after attending the installation of the new committee of the Tiong's Clan Association of Bintulu Saturday night.

 He made these comments following the rampant occurences of fighting cases here recently which had landed several people at the divisional hospital here.

The fighting cases came to the MP's knowledge while he was probing several complaints made by residents of RPR Kidurong during a function that he attended of a case where a 20-year-old youth suffered multiple injuries after being assaulted by a group of people and had to be sent to the hospital.

At the same housing area, he was told that another case was about four youths who were attacked by a group of more than 10 people for no apparent reason, resulting to all of them requiring hospital treatment with two of the victims were learnt to be suffering serious injuries.

He said another case happened in the town area here involved a youth who received several slash wounds in several parts of his body after he came out from a pub.

Tiong felt that human resources from Rela could be mobilised to complement the shortage of manpower faced by the police department to conduct patrol beat in public and entertainment areas to deter any would be trouble-makers from causing public disturbance or injuring other people.

"The involvement of Rela members in joining operations mounted by police is nothing new in the country as it had already happened in other places and this cooperation could also be done in Bintulu," he added.

The police department was also urged to station their personnel at a "police pondok" that had been set up at the divisional hospital here to ensure their prompt availability to check on assault-related injury cases that had been referred to the hospital. 

"Their presence is particularly necessary at almost any time as some of the (assault) cases happened either during midnight or early in the morning," said Tiong, assuring that he would communicate with the Ministry of Home Affairs and the State Police Headquarters to enable all "police pondoks" here are utilised.

He also urged the local authority here to be firm in their measures to ensure that all entertainment outlets are operating only during the stipulated operation hours and to revoke the licences of outlets that had been violating the regulations or prone of being "troubled places." 

Beside the organisations concerned, he also felt the importance of the family institutions and hoped that parents would be more vigilant of their teenaged children activities to ensure that they stayed out of trouble all the time.

"We should not treat this fighting and assault cases lightly. We have to take the drastic action now before it is too late to do so," he said, stressing that the failure to take the checking measures would leave a wrong impression particularly among the young generation that they could easily take the laws into their own hands here.