Friday, June 29, 2001

Tawau feedmill's siting 'in order'

Daily Express
29-6-2001

Tawau: A Tawau feedmill executive said Thursday the mill's siting in Tanjung Batu is in order as it is located within a general industrial area.

He also ruled out potential pollution fears raised by nearby residents who contacted the Daily Express last week.

The residents had sought an assurance from the authorities that the mill's operation will neither be smelly nor dusty or noisy.

"The whole processing operation will be enclosed and the feed materials used will be dry corn and soya destined for chicken and prawn farms," said the executive in a telephone interview.

Tawau alone has about 6,000 acres of prawn farms and numerous chicken farms.

"Furthermore, most of the processed feeds will go straight to the dockyard to be barged out to other towns and the lorries we are going to use for overland transportation will be enclosed silo trucks," he pointed out.

He said given a production capacity of 25 tons per hour, overland transportation will average no more than one truck per hour, he said.

Citing proof that the mill is in a general industrial land, he said the feedmill is just a stone's throw from a series of huge petroleum storage tanks, sawmills, crude palm oil storage facilities and cocoa processing factories which include cocoa fermentation facilities.

Convoys of lorries are already plying the area daily, ferrying such products especially when a crude palm oil tanker is in port.

Most of residents in the area are factory workers and their families are living in squatter houses.

Local government by-laws, in fact, bar housing within half a kilometre of a petroleum storage area.

Within sight from the area is a huge quarry which involves almost daily blasting of a once magnificent Tawau Hill for its granite stones.

The nearest feedmills from Tawau are either 450km away, in Kota Kinabalu or 830km down south in Balikpapan in Indodesian Kalimantan.

Given that transportation cost of feed from Kota Kinabalu to Tawau is about RM100 per ton, the executive asserted that a feedmill in Tawau will cut feed costs by 18 per cent.

"This will help to keep both the poultry and prawn culture industries competitive in the face of challenges from other BIMP-EAGA producers, particularly immediate neighbour Indonesia," he said.

That is, if the transport cost savings are passed on to the producers.

Note: Pollution and health hazard from feedmills owned by Comsa and stone quarry owned by Otentik Sdn Bhd. has never been solved. It was said that they paid out big sum of money to certain government officers to keep their business going.

Tuesday, June 26, 2001

A splendid job on holes, but not feedmill's location

Daily Express
26 June, 2001

Tawau: In a follow-up survey to what was highlighted in the Daily Express several months ago about gaping holes on the five-foot way along Jalan Stephen Tan here, it was found that the Tawau Municipal Council (TMC) had sealed the holes splendidly.

New concrete covers were evidence of recent action, although regulars in the area alleged they had appealed for repairs for a long time without success.

The report's main contention for urgent Council action was that unsuspecting pedestrians had been injured after falling into the holes and more could happen if they weren't sealed.

But two kilometres away in Tanjung Batu, residents of a densely populated area raised their worries about possible flying dust and unpleasant odour from a large feedmill currently under construction near the sea in their homely district.

Since the TMC has a say in approval or otherwise of the feedmill's location, they queried why the mill was allowed to be built in a health sensitive area, as not only the nearby residents might be affected but also the Tawau General Hospital barely a kilometre away.

They said since the building of the mill is well under way, the TMC and also the Health Services Department need to assure Tawau folks in no uncertain terms that operation of the mill will not make the surrounding air smelly nor dusty or noisy.

This is because convoys of big lorries transporting the feeds are expected to make regular trips through the housing areas and pass by the general hospital or the Tawau Golf Course.

"The smell from such flying lorries may be much more than a whiff, if not from the mill itself," commented a well-known personality here.

When contacted, an industry insider said feed mills generally present little pollution problem.

"If you are talking about a fish mill, then definitely it is going to smell. But if it is a chicken or other feedmill, then it is generally clean. What happens is that the various types of grains from the ships are first conveyed into huge silos where they are sealed and stored. Then these are sucked up into the mixers fixed metres above the ground from where they are funnelled into sacks below and packed," he said.

However, the ordinary folks said such verbal assurances may not match reality in practice.

Be that as it may, the residents said they wanted concrete public assurances of a hazard-free operation before any feed processing starts failing which the relevant authorities should relocating it.