THE volume of traffic on Sibu roads fell by as much as 27.8% after the movement-control order (MCO) was imposed in this central Sarawak town to break the transmission of the Covid-19, state Transport Minister Lee Kim Shin said yesterday.

Data from the state’s Smart City Traffic Light Control Centre based in Kuching show the daily average traffic volume after Sibu went into a lockdown on January 16 was 41,234 vehicles compared with 57,120 before the MCO.

Lee said in a statement, the dip in volume could be because Sibu motorists preferred to stay at home to avoid the hassle of roadblocks rather than compliance with stay-home advice to cut transmission.

The data were gathered through the 77 smart traffic lights installed in the major towns between January 17 and 27.

These lights are linked to the control centre in Kuching.

In comparison, the average daily volume in the far larger town of Kuching, which is under the conditional MCO, fell by a mere 7.7% – the smallest drop among all the major towns.

Prior to the reimposition of the CMCO on January 13, the volume in this city of a quarter million people was 52,116 but after the reimposition, it just fell to 48,092.

Miri in northern Sarawak has the second highest drop after Sibu.

The volume in the recovery MCO period was 47,401 but after it slipped back to the CMCO, the volume dropped by 16.5% to 39,603.

The two other towns which contributed data to the study were Sarikei, where the volume shrank by 11.3% and the liquefied natural gas town of Bintulu by 8.3%

“The statistics for the average traffic volume during RMCO, before the imposition of CMCO/MCO, were all taken from the daily traffic volume of the same day in three previous weeks,” Lee said of the methodology of his ministry’s study.

The findings have been submitted to the state’s disaster management committee.

The Pasai cluster on the outskirts of Sibu is the state’s deadliest – claiming 12 lives and mostly elderly longhouse residents with underlying chronic ailments – between January 21 and yesterday.

The state’s two other deaths in the same period were in Miri.

Of the 171 new cases reported yesterday in Sarawak, 77 were from Sibu with 43 linked to the Pasai cluster. – January 29, 2021.