By Linda Edward
NAGASIBA, PENAMPANG — At long last, the building of the new St Paul Church began today with the commencement of earthworks on its five acres project site in Kg Nagasiba here.
The aim of the project is to relocate the existing St Paul Church in Dontozidon to Nagasiba as it could no longer accommodate the increasing parishioners over the years.
Archbishop John Wong of Kota Kinabalu Archdiocese has today in a simple ceremony, blessed the Nagasiba project site and officiated the commencement of the first leg of the works.
The prelate said that it is good that the working committee is taking up the efforts to kickstart the project now.
The scope of earthworks will involve, among others, site clearing, minimal land cut of approximately 604.3 cubic metre and land filling work of 25,000 cubic metre, as well as construction of temporary earth drains.
The earthworks will take three months to complete from Sep 17-Dec 10, 2021 and costs about RM689,000.
Those who are involved in the works are Contractor Tarawi Enterprise Penampang, Quantity Surveyor Bernard Lo of Perunding KK Bina Sdn Bhd and Ir Florian Hiew of Jurutera Perunding Sinareka.
Also present at the blessing ceremony were parish priest of St Paul Dontozidon Parish, Fr Paul Lo and assistant priests, Fathers Saimon William and Sunny Chung.
St Paul Dontozidon had on 19 Mar 2017 held the inaugural fundraising dinner at Hakka Hall, Likas to encourage support of the new Church.
Local and federal ministers were present at the fundraising dinner which saw presentation of mock cheques to Archbishop Wong by MCA Penampang Division (RM300,000.00), Datuk John Lim Pang Seng (RM100,000.00) and United Pasokmomogun (RM78,750.00).
