I hope the Royal Police Force will set up patrol cars to patrol the highways from Muara to Tutong and Tutong to Kuala Balai.

Police Patrol cars can even be parked at a special location somewhere near the highway. This is what is being done in the UK.

There is a lot of advantages in doing this.

Accidents on highway could be within reach of police in just a short of time.

Motorists who have had engine problem could be assisted by Police, especially late at night, road rage could be brought under control, speed limits on highway could be monitored; to divert or control traffic jams incase of a sudden accident, fallen trees etc; in case of robbery any suspicious car can be easily detected along the highway.

Any suspicious activity along the highway could be reached fast by Police already on alert.

Cyclists will also be encouraged to ride safely.

There are a lot of other reasons for setting up this system.

Hopefully the relevant authorities would take notice of this suggestion.

- Concerned Motorist

We live in a terrace house where our backyard is facing privately owned mountainous land. Due to the recent heavy downpour, erosion has occurred, causing muddy water to seep into our kitchen and eroded soil could reach up to our window sill level.

Can the authorities, please advise as to whom we can refer this matter to?

We need help urgently.

- Erosion Victims,

No.25, Spg 185, BeeHin Garden Jalan Subok,

BSB Brunei Darussalam

The article, Give My Daughter A Chance At Higher Education by Anxious Parent which appeared on December 2004 in the Borneo Bulletin Opinion Column is referred.

Student admission to all vocational and technical institutions are processed through a computerised Student Admission System which was introduced and endorsed by the Department of Technical Education in the year 2004.

This system processes each applicant equally irrespective of which district they are from. In the system, each subject is awarded according to their relevance to the course i.e. subjects relevant to the course are awarded higher points.

For the intake into JBCE for the January 2005 intake, 2 programmes were advertised. A total of 119 applications were received, 66 were called for interview and 46 firm places were offered. The interview is one of the procedures included in the selection process.

The Anxious Parent, it is regrettable that your daughter was not admitted to JBCE, after her application was pitted against all the other applications in accordance to the selection procedure and criteria. The institution is more than happy to explain and clarify this matter to you in person.

- Department of Technical Education
Ministry of Education

I, like many other parents have just completed the task of buying books etc. for my children for the academic year.

While in the bookstore in Kiulap I noticed two study guides for secondary and primary students on display at the store, called Post and Junior Post.

I have read about these two books before in this page so I was interested to see what they are all about. After reading through both of them now I understand why the writers were so impressed.

These study guides are exactly what our students need to give them some extra help in their studies. The sales attendant said that several schools are already using them for their students. This is very good news.

I hope other school principals will also do this for this year as they are not expensive. Most are really looking forward to using them.

For parents like us who want to give our children some practical help with their studies, I would seriously recommend they look at these study guides. Hopefully they will not wait as long as I did to find out about these good books.

- Impressed Parent

I am so disappointed and wonder why we didn't receive any asstsance after being hit by floods, recently.

Does anyone know how hard the residents had to work just to wash away the mud? The losses they suffered too were big. I am sure Subok residents will be very glad even if just a little bit of help is offered. Although Subok was not the only town to be hit by the torrential rains and flood, I really think there should have been more effort and concern to help the helpless flood victims.

- Flood-hit

I am a DST Easi user. It has been really convenient when they introduced the *102# system to check the credit balance and expiry date whenever you want without dialing 159. Since I always use *102#, I clearly remember the credit balance and the expiry date of my card.

The other day when I was again checking my credit balance, it stated "Sorry. Calls not possible. Please recharge your account before <date>". I

was very surprised by this. Initially, I thought it is a network problem since DST seems to be very prone to "network problems" all the time.

So I used my sister's phone to dial *102#, and apparently it was working "normally". I was quite shocked, and so I dialed 151, the DST helpdesk; to ask why my card was not functioning properly and also to inquire why I was experiencing this problem.

The DST help-desk merely informed me that I had insufficient funds to make any calls. I was stunned.

I remember exactly how much credit I had left in my card. Then, I told him that the expiry date is on the 10th and the amount of credit I had left. And he told me that it had already expired on the 4th.

Can you see what's wrong here? If indeed I did not have sufficient funds to make a call, then answer me this. Exactly how was I making this call to the DST help-desk, if I had insufficient credit which had expired on 2 days ago, January 4?

First he tells me that I have insufficient funds to make calls, and then he tells me that my credit had red on the 4th already.

I argued that if my credit had expired on the 4th, then shouldn't the service centre have sent me a message few days prior to the date of expiry that my credit would expire on the 4th? And apparently, the DST service centre had sent me the messages but I never received them, which leads me to my next problem.

DST's messaging services seem very unstable. There have been many occasions when I send messages to my friends and family but they say that they have not received.

It wastes my time, my energy, and my credit, typing out those messages that do not get sent out when I could be doing something else more worthwhile with my time.

And now, I go back to my original problem. What was left of my credit (several dollars) is now lost.

I'm not saying that it is necessary to repay me back my lost credit, but all I am asking for is an explanation to why DST has so many problems on so many levels. I am sure that every single DST user experiences these problems as well.

- Customer

I quite agree with the trauma of extended school hours. Hasn't it crossed the minds of anyone especially those who are all the time complaining that teachers work five hours whereas government and private sector workers work 8 - 9 hours a day?

Well let me tell you something. There is a huge difference between managing normal office work and teaching.

At school, teachers deal with children's minds so everything has to be prepared earlier every single week for examples lesson plans, worksheets, homework, teaching material, making children's work daily and etc.

There are also times in the afternoon when teachers are required to attend courses (always held in Bandar Seri Begawan), meetings, preparing test papers, tuitions for weak pupils and training pupils for competitions held every year etc.

All this needs to be done to make sure that the "100" hours is completed. Plus when those who are working in the offices can enjoy your Fridays or weekends with family, teachers will still have to do more activities such as never ending extra curricular i.e PRS activities, school cleaning campaigns, football competitions and many more activities.

On weekdays teachers need to check the children's books - hundreds of them and weeknights teachers too need to prepare teaching material and what to teach the next day.

So now let me ask you, why need to add more time to be in school?

The idea that longer the children are in school the more intelligent they would be - does not ring true.

Nowadays, I could see that the children are too exhausted as well as the teachers.

When teachers are too tired to think there would be less interest to teach and if children's minds are tired they will be rejecting whatever they learn. Worn-out minds will rarely improve.

- Insomnia

I would like to bring to the attention of concerned authorities the issue of actively roaming buffaloes around Kampung Tanjung Nangka.

As I am working in Bandar and work on shift, I usually encounter herds of buffaloes around 4am on my way to work.

I also often see commuters stop in the middle of the road waiting for the buffaloes to cross to the other side of the road.

Even worse, there are incidents when buffaloes suudenly run into cars.

So I would suggest that action could be taken before the worst happens.

- Concerned

Refering to the article published on January 5, 2005 entitled 'Motorists Lament Over Parking Lot Businesses".

I totally agreed that types of businesses like Workshops, Car Wash, Second-hand Car Showroom should not be located in a commercial building/shop-house and such businesses should be located at a place suitable for it.

The workshop that shares the same block as my office has over 15 cars parked permanently at the parking area, they have used up most of all the parking space available.

Some of their cars are even parked on one side of the road, reducing the usage of the road to a single lane.

Dirt, oil stains & rubbish are strewn everywhere.

Every morning before we start work, we have to do some cleaning outside of our office.

Noise pollution generated by the workshop also tortures us everyday.

I am quite surprised why there is still no action taken on such an irresponsible business operator.

I really hope the Town & Country Planning Dept could spare some time to inspect this site and take action on this business operator.

- Very Frustrated