Sabah Rep Pushes Alarm-Style Alerts for GoNet Parking App

Api-Api assemblyman Loi Kok Liang has proposed two alarm-style alert functions for the GoNet parking app in Kota Kinabalu, after a meeting with the platform’s founder and management team in which he raised a familiar user complaint: notifications that arrive too briefly to act on. The proposals are a parking renewal alarm and an instant summons alert, both built to surface on a phone the way a clock alarm does, persistent enough that a driver cannot miss them. Loi framed the meeting, covered by the Borneo Post Sabah edition on June 25, 2026, as a renewal-and-penalty problem rather than a redesign of the parking experience.

GoNet already runs as a locally developed digital platform providing parking payment services alongside other digital services that support local government initiatives. Loi’s pitch lands against that backdrop: a working app, an established operator, and a notification pattern that keeps catching users out. The GoNet founder and management team welcomed the proposals and agreed to explore the possibility of developing the features, the assemblyman said, and preliminary discussions on the technical aspects have also been held. Nothing has been committed to a build timeline yet.

Two Features, One Familiar Problem

The proposals target two narrow notification gaps, not the whole parking experience. The first ask is a parking renewal alarm that fires when a paid session is about to expire. The second is an instant summons alert that surfaces the moment a compound is logged against a vehicle, a feature now in the public record through the Sabah assemblyman’s parking app alarm proposals.

The renewal alarm catches drivers who paid for an hour and stayed for two. The summons alert addresses a second failure: a notification that appears on the lock screen and then disappears before the user returns to their car. The two features nudge the user before the unpaid interval costs a second charge on top of any compound already incurred. Each stands alone, and together they cover the two windows in which a Kota Kinabalu driver currently loses money without seeing the loss.

Loi framed both as reminder functions, modelled on smartphone alarm clocks that require manual dismissal. Continuous or repeated notifications until acknowledged by users would force the message out of the brief-bubble pattern that erases the alert within seconds. He described the persistence as the feature’s actual job: it makes sure the user sees the warning while there is still time to act on it, rather than after the bill has already been added.

• Parking renewal alarm, a continuous or repeated alert when a paid session is about to expire.
• Instant summons alert, a persistent notification the moment a compound is logged against the vehicle.

The Duplicate-Payment Trap

The two features respond to a payment structure most users only learn the hard way. In Kota Kinabalu’s digital parking setup, a compound and a parking fee are tracked separately. A vehicle can owe one without owing the other, and the two bills do not cancel out. That split is the engine of the duplicate-payment trap: a driver who sees a missed renewal notice will sometimes renew the session, not realising a compound has already been logged for the gap, and end up paying twice for the same window.

Loi named the rule plainly.

Because another compound cannot be issued on the same day for the same vehicle at the same parking bay, the additional parking payment becomes unnecessary while the original compound remains payable.

That detail is what makes the notification failure expensive. The renewed parking session covers time the city will not compound a second time. The original compound stays on the books and still has to be paid. The user has now covered parking and the penalty for the same lapse, and they have done it because the original summons alert vanished before they could read it. The money was never refunded, and the warning that would have stopped them was never seen.

Loi said he frequently receives complaints from motorists who are issued compounds after forgetting to extend their parking sessions while attending to work, meetings, shopping or other commitments. He added that many remain unaware a compound has already been issued because existing notifications appear only briefly before disappearing automatically, leaving them to keep paying for or renewing parking sessions they no longer need.

1. Driver parks and pays for a one-hour session through GoNet.
2. Session expires while the driver is in a meeting, shop or appointment.
3. A compound is logged against the vehicle for the unpaid interval.
4. A brief notification appears on the phone and disappears within seconds.
5. Driver returns, sees the lapse, and renews the parking session unaware a compound already sits on the account.

Two Apps, One Bay

GoNet does not run alone in Kota Kinabalu. The city has two parallel parking apps, and the assemblyman’s pitch landed against that backdrop. Sabah Smart Parking, developed by DBKK Holdings Sdn Bhd, includes compound payment in Sabah and currently supports Kota Kinabalu, with more cities planned, per its public listing on Sabah Smart Parking’s compound-payment app for Kota Kinabalu. GoNet sits alongside it as an alternative platform, not a replacement, which is why a notification gap on either app can leak across the user base. Both apps are downloaded under their own brands, including the GoNet e-wallet and parking app, and both take payment for the same bays.

The two platforms share a city but split a feature list. The table below sets out what each offers on the points Loi’s proposal touches.

Welcomed the Proposals

GoNet did not push back in the room. The founder and management team welcomed the proposals during the meeting, Loi said, and agreed to explore the possibility of developing the features. Preliminary discussions on the technical aspects have also been held, he added. That response leaves the door open without a release date, and the conversation so far has stayed at the level of feature scope and feasibility.

None of those details touch the notification problem directly, but they set the scale: a local platform with a published support operation, sitting across the table from a state assemblyman and a list of complaints pulled from the public. GoNet operates as a locally developed digital platform providing parking payment services and other digital services supporting local government initiatives, and it has agreed in principle to look at a feature that sits squarely inside that scope. The question is now whether the look turns into a build.

Loi is betting on the manual dismissal model borrowed from phone alarm clocks. Notifications that repeat or ring continuously until the user clears them would force the summons alert out of the brief-bubble pattern that erases the message before drivers return to their cars. The persistence, he argues, is what makes the feature useful at all. A notice that can be missed in three seconds is no notice at all.

A Cashless Turn Across Sabah

The proposal lands as Kota Kinabalu moves toward a cashless parking ecosystem. GoNet already operates as a digital payment layer for parking and other local government services, and Sabah Smart Parking has begun rolling out across more Sabah cities from its Kota Kinabalu base. With more drivers paying through apps, the cost of a missed notification shifts from an occasional coin-fed fine to a recurring debit that lands quietly on a linked e-wallet, often without the driver ever seeing the screen that logged it.

The friction between the two apps is a regional story, not just a Kota Kinabalu one. Parking-payment rollouts elsewhere have produced their own user friction, including the Fens reservoir consultation on app-only parking, where residents asked that car park payment not be app-only. The Sabah assemblyman’s pitch is the same complaint from a different angle: a single app, even a good one, is only as reliable as the notification it sends.

From Conversation to Code

The path from a state assemblyman’s pitch to a shipping notification feature typically runs through product, design and engineering, then an app store update. Loi’s announcement did not name a target release, and GoNet has not published a public roadmap for the two features. The technical-feasibility talks he referenced are the earliest stage of that pipeline, not a build commitment.

What is public is the political pressure on the timeline. Concerns regarding existing parking systems have been raised repeatedly by the public, Loi said, and he intends to keep gathering feedback while working with government agencies and private companies. The proposal now sits as an open ask from a sitting assemblyman to a company that has signalled it is willing to listen.

Loi said motorists would naturally prefer platforms that respond quickly to users’ needs and offer practical solutions, and that he would continue gathering public feedback while working with government agencies and private companies to improve urban services through innovation.