The Bintulu member of Parliament, Dato' Seri Tiong King Sing noted that the area could not be ignored despite of its distances from the major towns in Sarawak as it played an important role in generating economic revenue to the State and country.

"Although Niah-Suai are in a remote area, the presence of Niah Caves has made it one of hottest tourist spot in Sarawak. Niah-Suai is also the pioneer in the oil palm development in the State," he said in a statement released late Tuesday.

The statement came in response to a recent attempted armed robbery case that had occured near the Batu Niah bazaar as well as previous cases of criminals hijacking cargo trucks and the Ulu Niah bloodshed in 1999.

He said that being one of the integral part of the Bintulu parliamentary constituency, he did not wish to see the image of the Niah-Suai area to be tarnished from a well known tourist haven to become a cowboy town where everyone could take the laws into their own hands.

While expressing his gratefulness that no casualty was reported from the latest incident, he added that such case had raised public concern about the level of security in the area as well as questioning the ability of police to maintain order in becoming the leading law enforcers.

Such a situation could not be ignored, according to him as numerous public complaints that he had received about the problem and he described that it would be "a ridiculous thing" if such serious crime cases continued to occur in the area.

"I have repeatedly appealed to the police to increase their manpower strength, including assigning an officer of at least  a Chief Inspector rank in that district. Regretfully,  until now there had been no obvious improvement in the manpower and even facilities like patrol cars in that area," he lamented. 

Despite of the remote location of Niah, Tiong believed that it should also be treated as a special case as there were also a lot of foreign workers and police would have to increase the facilities to curb any crime activities, while protecting the interest of the investors. 

"I don't think shortage of manpower will be a good excuse anymore to explain whenever another big (crime) case happening again. This is purely mismanagement of error," he said, stating that manpower from the General Operation Force (GOF), the army, Rela and RT could also be used. 

He believed that the government departments or agencies should not concentrate to use their manpower or facilities only in areas where there are top leaders staying.

On the recent attempted robbery, he also hoped the banks would also increased their security and to carry out internal investigation in making sure that none of their staff are leaking information about their clients.

He also hoped that policemen would continue to treat all cases referred to them seriously whether it involved big or small cases.

Tiong  stressed that there had been a number of complaints that he received about policemen who preferred complainants to settle their case on their own rather than to be involved to solve it.

To him, the laws enforcers should uphold their professional ethics when carrying out their duties and not to advise public members to settle cases on their own merely to avoid additional workload.

"If you continue to encourage people to settle outside (without police involvement), you are encouraging them to take the laws into their own hands... eventually, who is going to respect the law," he added.