Sabah News Flash

National Doctor’s Day on October 10

National Doctors’ Day will be celebrated in Sabah on October 10, a first for the Association of Private Practitioners Sabah (APPS).  That day will be an opportunity for the public to appreciate doctors and in return, for the doctors to give back to the people by offering free services on that day.

According to APPS Secretary Dr Rizin Kusop, the association has lined up several activities in commemoration of the National Doctors’ Day.  There will be free health screening to include blood pressure and blood sugar checks and bone density tests.  Eye specialists will also offer free eye examination and a talk will be conducted by one their peers. Dr Sharon Paulraj, on glaucoma and cataract. The day will be capped by a simple dinner get-together.

APPS is under the umbrella of the Federation of Private Medical Practitioners’ Associations Malaysia (FPMPAM) and was registered with the Registrar of Societies on March of this year with Dr James Jeremiah as its first president.  Together with another NGO, they conducted a Health Campaign in one of the communities last August 20 with 100 villagers benefiting from health information and screening activities.

Tigerair Taiwan Terminating Flights to Kota Kinabalu

Two years after the start of operations in 2014 with its first flight to Singapore, Tigerair Taiwan announced that starting January 2017, they will be terminating flights to Singapore and Kota Kinabalu and only flights to the cities of Bangkok and Chiang Mai will be left for Southeast Asia.  This move was to towards achieving “network efficiency”, along with the acquisition of its 10^th Airbus 320 aircraft and additional flights to four other Asian destinations.

Tigerair Taiwan, the only domestic budget airline of Taiwan, is a joint venture between China Airlines and Tigerair Singapore with a 90-10 sharing.  Recent reports say that it has incurred large amounts of losses since the start of operations amounting to millions of Singaporean dollars.  Ho Nuan-hsuan, chairman of China Airlines, said that he might leave the partnership if this trend continues.  He is also planning a review of the joint-venture agreement which gives the other airline greater power to veto major decisions, including closure.

Hochen Tan, Ministrer of Transport and Communications of Taiwan, said his organization is hoping that the partnership will continue because there are plans to make Taiwan a hub for low-cost airlines.

Free WiFi in Kota Kinabalu

Starting November, people in Kota Kinabalu will be able to connect to the internet for free due to the approval of the free WiFi project of Mayor Datuk Yeo Boon Hai.  It was approved by the Communications and Multimedia Ministry (MCMC) with a bandwidth of 1 gigabyte (1 GB) and a speed of not less than 10Mbps.

David Ng, Information Technology department director at the City Hall, said that one can go online, will be automatically logged off after 30 minutes and then go online again after 15 minutes or more.  Signal will be at its weakest inside buildings because this free WiFi service is for tourists and those on the streets.