Daily Express
7-5-2001
Tawau: The Tawau Barter Trade Association (BATS) urged the State Government to consider their request to reduce the processing fees of imported timber.
Newly elected President Frankie Seng Huah Hua claimed that the Primary Industries Ministry had initially agreed to lower the current fees of RM40 cubic metres imposed by the Sabah Forestry Department to as low as RM10 during a meeting last August.
The association made the initial request to the Chief Minister's Department in June 1999, followed by a formal application to the Ministry concerned the next day, he said.
"To date, the association has yet to receive a positive response from both the Ministry and the State government," he added.
Seng pointed out that it was necessary to lower the processing fees of imported timber to ensure sufficient supply of raw materials to the domestic market, coupled with price decline of wood-based products in the international market.
According to him, BATS had a total membership of some 40 companies involved in the import of timber, rattan and sundry items for the local market.
Apart from Seng, others elected to the committee during Sunday's annual general meeting were Mohd Aziz Ali (deputy president), Samsuddin Imjut, Wong Wai Hong (vice-presidents), Omar Bachora (secretary) and Wong That Sim (treasurer).
The committee members are Cha Si Hiong, Damat Taboyo, Abu Bakar Jambuan, Osman Hassan, Asmat Nursin, Landasan Tumabil and Jakirun amir Hasin.
Monday, May 07, 2001
Wednesday, April 11, 2001
Sabah Government won't interfere in ACA water meter probe
New Sabah Times
Wednesday, April 11, 2001
The Sabah government will not interfere in the investigations of the Anti-Corruption Agency into alleged malpractices in a contract to change water meters in the State.
Chief Minister Datuk Chong Kah Kiat said the government would make decide on further action based on the findings of the agency.
"We are letting ACA handle this case and we advise all parties to cooperate with the agency," he said after a briefing by the Kota Kinabalu City Hall.
Last week, State ACA director Chuah Cheng Man said the agency had taken statements from several individuals from a public agency and a State government department.
The State Water Department had awarded a contract worth RM250 million to change 100,000 water metres in the State to a contractor last year.
It had been alleged that the contractor had given the project to another company for only RM17 million.
(By Raynore Mering)
Wednesday, April 11, 2001
The Sabah government will not interfere in the investigations of the Anti-Corruption Agency into alleged malpractices in a contract to change water meters in the State.
Chief Minister Datuk Chong Kah Kiat said the government would make decide on further action based on the findings of the agency.
"We are letting ACA handle this case and we advise all parties to cooperate with the agency," he said after a briefing by the Kota Kinabalu City Hall.
Last week, State ACA director Chuah Cheng Man said the agency had taken statements from several individuals from a public agency and a State government department.
The State Water Department had awarded a contract worth RM250 million to change 100,000 water metres in the State to a contractor last year.
It had been alleged that the contractor had given the project to another company for only RM17 million.
(By Raynore Mering)
Tuesday, April 10, 2001
Musa and team sweep Libaran
The Star
Tuesday, April 10, 2001
SANDAKAN: Sabah Finance Minister Datuk Musa Aman and his running mates made a sweep of the Libaran Umno division here, wiping out state assembly Speaker Datuk Hassan Alban Sandukong and his team.
Musa trounced Hassan by over 330 votes to retain the chairman's post which he has held since Umno spread its wings to Sabah in 1991.
"I thank Allah for giving me this victory. The results show that the members in Libaran are not divided as all my men have won. It shows that only a small group of people made it look like we were divided.
"The people of Libaran are with me as they have always been and they have no doubt that I have their interest at heart,'' said Musa, a native of the west coast Beaufort town, who was labelled an outsider during the intense campaign in this semi-urban east coast Sabah division.
Musa polled 576 of the 838 ballots cast while Hassan managed to get 240 votes in the contest which turned into a brawl at last week's Wanita meeting.
The division elections were also nearly stopped after rival groups tried to force a postponement and insisted that all ballot papers were signed by the candidates.
Musa said his priority was to bring back unity in the division and work with all the members.
In the contest, Musa's allies Libaran MP Juslie Ajirol easily beat a last-minute challenge by former parliamentarian Akbarkhan Abdul Rahman to keep the deputy chairman's post by a 300-vote margin.
The division's information chief Samsuddin Yahya, who was in the Musa camp toppled incumbent vice-chairman Datuk Nahalan Damsal, a state assistant minister aligned to Hassan.
The 20 division committee posts and seven delegates were also won by the Musa camp.
Hassan and his team left the meeting hall of the Sandakan Community Centre 15 minutes before the official result were announced at 1am.
"I will accept the verdict,'' said Hassan as he left the centre, adding that he would need three days before making a statement.
As indications of the results outcome started to emerge, police personnel took up positions outside the community centre where supporters waited.
However, supporters from both camps left peacefully by 2am ending the year-long battle for Libaran Umno which was rife with allegations and counter allegations ranging from money politics, cheating and questionable nominations at branch meetings.
At least 30 police reports were lodged and dozens of complaints made to the special Sabah Umno division election monitoring committee since the branch elections started in March.
After a nearly two-hour standoff between rival supporters at Sunday's meeting, it proceeded peacefully with no further incident with state Umno representatives Datuk Rizalman Abdullah and Ronald Kiandee ensuring the voting process and count was done in open view.
Tuesday, April 10, 2001
SANDAKAN: Sabah Finance Minister Datuk Musa Aman and his running mates made a sweep of the Libaran Umno division here, wiping out state assembly Speaker Datuk Hassan Alban Sandukong and his team.
Musa trounced Hassan by over 330 votes to retain the chairman's post which he has held since Umno spread its wings to Sabah in 1991.
"I thank Allah for giving me this victory. The results show that the members in Libaran are not divided as all my men have won. It shows that only a small group of people made it look like we were divided.
"The people of Libaran are with me as they have always been and they have no doubt that I have their interest at heart,'' said Musa, a native of the west coast Beaufort town, who was labelled an outsider during the intense campaign in this semi-urban east coast Sabah division.
Musa polled 576 of the 838 ballots cast while Hassan managed to get 240 votes in the contest which turned into a brawl at last week's Wanita meeting.
The division elections were also nearly stopped after rival groups tried to force a postponement and insisted that all ballot papers were signed by the candidates.
Musa said his priority was to bring back unity in the division and work with all the members.
In the contest, Musa's allies Libaran MP Juslie Ajirol easily beat a last-minute challenge by former parliamentarian Akbarkhan Abdul Rahman to keep the deputy chairman's post by a 300-vote margin.
The division's information chief Samsuddin Yahya, who was in the Musa camp toppled incumbent vice-chairman Datuk Nahalan Damsal, a state assistant minister aligned to Hassan.
The 20 division committee posts and seven delegates were also won by the Musa camp.
Hassan and his team left the meeting hall of the Sandakan Community Centre 15 minutes before the official result were announced at 1am.
"I will accept the verdict,'' said Hassan as he left the centre, adding that he would need three days before making a statement.
As indications of the results outcome started to emerge, police personnel took up positions outside the community centre where supporters waited.
However, supporters from both camps left peacefully by 2am ending the year-long battle for Libaran Umno which was rife with allegations and counter allegations ranging from money politics, cheating and questionable nominations at branch meetings.
At least 30 police reports were lodged and dozens of complaints made to the special Sabah Umno division election monitoring committee since the branch elections started in March.
After a nearly two-hour standoff between rival supporters at Sunday's meeting, it proceeded peacefully with no further incident with state Umno representatives Datuk Rizalman Abdullah and Ronald Kiandee ensuring the voting process and count was done in open view.
Sunday, April 08, 2001
Water meter investigation still in preliminary stage: Sabah ACA director
New Sabah Times
Sunday, April 08, 2001
KOTA KINABALU: The Anti-Corruption Agency has called up several people for questioning in connection with alleged irregularities in the award of a contract worth RM49 million to replace 100,000 faulty water meters in Sabah.
State ACA director Chuah Chang Man said those questioned were from Government departments and private firms.
"We took down their statements and they gave their full co-operation," he told reporters after officiating the State ACA family day at Tanjung Aru beach, here, today.
He said investigation was still at the preliminary stage.
The controversy surrounding the award of the contract was widely reported by the media early this year prompting the then Chief Minister Datuk Osu Sukam to come up with an explanation.
It was reported that RM250 was approved for replacing each of the 100,000 faulty meters when the installation cost for a meter was said to be only RM17.
Osu had defended the State Government's decision, saying that the RM250 installation cost for a new meter was justified.
He had also said that besides labour and service charge, the installation cost also covers other items such as galvanised iron pipe, pipe elbow and nipples, lockable valves, drain plugs and sluice valves.
Osu also said that although the tender for the project was awarded on a negotiated basis and that it was made according to standard procedures.
Sunday, April 08, 2001
KOTA KINABALU: The Anti-Corruption Agency has called up several people for questioning in connection with alleged irregularities in the award of a contract worth RM49 million to replace 100,000 faulty water meters in Sabah.
State ACA director Chuah Chang Man said those questioned were from Government departments and private firms.
"We took down their statements and they gave their full co-operation," he told reporters after officiating the State ACA family day at Tanjung Aru beach, here, today.
He said investigation was still at the preliminary stage.
The controversy surrounding the award of the contract was widely reported by the media early this year prompting the then Chief Minister Datuk Osu Sukam to come up with an explanation.
It was reported that RM250 was approved for replacing each of the 100,000 faulty meters when the installation cost for a meter was said to be only RM17.
Osu had defended the State Government's decision, saying that the RM250 installation cost for a new meter was justified.
He had also said that besides labour and service charge, the installation cost also covers other items such as galvanised iron pipe, pipe elbow and nipples, lockable valves, drain plugs and sluice valves.
Osu also said that although the tender for the project was awarded on a negotiated basis and that it was made according to standard procedures.
Wednesday, January 03, 2001
Sabah water meter scandal?
Daily Express
3 January 2001
KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah Water Department is replacing 100,000 meters and some quarters are alleging that the multi-million ringgit deal reportedly stinks.
It will purportedly cost the department RM250 to install the meter with valve-locks under the deal struck between a contractor and the State Finance Ministry.
It is alleged that the contractor had sub-contracted the work and was only paying RM127 to get each meter installed.
The meters bought by the department at about RM220 each from a supplier were offered without any cost to the contractor.
When approached by reporters for details of the deal Deputy Chief Minister and Infrastructure Development Minister Datuk Bumburing said the state Finance Ministry was responsible for awarding the contract.
He said the role of the Water Department, under the jurisdiction of his Ministry, was to co-ordinate with the contractor to identify areas where new meters were required.
On whether it will cost the department RM250 to install each meter, he said: "I don't know as I don't have the details of the contract.".
Sabah is one of the worst-hit states where water shortages have remained a recurring problem for decades and persisted even after water production was privatised in 1992
3 January 2001
KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah Water Department is replacing 100,000 meters and some quarters are alleging that the multi-million ringgit deal reportedly stinks.
It will purportedly cost the department RM250 to install the meter with valve-locks under the deal struck between a contractor and the State Finance Ministry.
It is alleged that the contractor had sub-contracted the work and was only paying RM127 to get each meter installed.
The meters bought by the department at about RM220 each from a supplier were offered without any cost to the contractor.
When approached by reporters for details of the deal Deputy Chief Minister and Infrastructure Development Minister Datuk Bumburing said the state Finance Ministry was responsible for awarding the contract.
He said the role of the Water Department, under the jurisdiction of his Ministry, was to co-ordinate with the contractor to identify areas where new meters were required.
On whether it will cost the department RM250 to install each meter, he said: "I don't know as I don't have the details of the contract.".
Sabah is one of the worst-hit states where water shortages have remained a recurring problem for decades and persisted even after water production was privatised in 1992
Monday, January 01, 2001
Gambar Lucah Ketua Wanita UMNO
Gambar Dato' Norjan Khan Bahadar ( Ketua Wanita UMNO Bahagian Papar merangkap timbalan menteri di Jabatan Ketua Menteri Sabah. ) bersama pemandu peribadinya ( adek kepada Sdr. Surin A.J.K. UMNO bahagian Kota Belut ) yang amat disayanginya.
Di sebalik keghairahan Dato'Dr. Siti Zaharah merombak Ketua Wanita UMNO Sabah sebenarnya terdapat cerita di sebaliknya.
Mungkinkah kerana gambar yang tersiar di laman ini atau pun kerana Dato' Norjan Khan Bahadar adalah orang Dato' Rafidah Aziz ?
Umum mengetahui Dato' Norjan Khan Bahadar adalah Timbalan Menteri di Jabatan Ketua Menteri dan orang yang paling dipercayai oleh Dato' Osu Sukam.
Di semenanjung Dato' Norjan Khan sememangnya ditakuti oleh sebahagian besar orang-orang kanan UMNO kerana pada beliaulah tersimpan segala memori kenangan di Sabah. Khasnya pada mereka yang tidak membawa pasangan ke Sabah, Dato' Norjan Khanlah yang menyediakan pasangan buat mereka. Sememangnya kami di Sabah amat menghormati dan melayan tetamu dengan baik.
Sayang sekali Dato' Norjan Khan tidak dapat menjadi Ketua Wanita UMNO Sabah seperti yang telah diceritakan dengan luasnya oleh Dato'Ketua Menteri Sabah sendiri.
Mungkin juga Orang UMNO disemenanjung takut rahsia mereka terbongkar dengan pelbagai skandal seks ?
Sekali lagi Dayang Mahani diselamatkan oleh suaminya yang tercinta Onn Ariffin diatas gambar yang tersiar.
Dato Onn Ariffin suami Dayang Mahani sebenarnya adalah orang Johor bukan orang Sabah. Beliau walaupun pernah memegang Setiausaha Agong USNO satu ketika dulu dan menjadi politik strategist untuk Tun Mustaffa sebenarnya adalah orang Dr. Mahathir. Kawan karibnya adalah Dato' Aziz Shamsuddin, Setiausaha Politik kepada Dr. Mahathir sendiri , sudah pasti mereka mahu Dayang Mahani terus kekal untuk mempertahankan matlamat dan keuntungan mereka.
Kepada yang ingin mendapatkan lebih lanjut tentang gambar di laman ini, ketegangan UMNO Sabah dan siapa Dato' Norjan Khan sebenarnya bolehlah menghubungi Dato' Onn Ariffin sendiri.
Nombor talipon : 08-8250838 ataupun : 019-3295216.
Semuga rakyat Sabah khasnya UMNO dapat gambaran yang jelas kenapa Dato' Norjan Khan tidak dapat jawatan Ketua Wanita Umno Sabah meskipun Dato' Ketua Menteri malahan Dato' Ketua Wanita UMNO Malaysia sendiri sudah menjanjikan pada kita.
Lihat Gambar Norjan
Gambar 1
Gambar 2
Aku rakyat Sabah yang tahuk.
Di sebalik keghairahan Dato'Dr. Siti Zaharah merombak Ketua Wanita UMNO Sabah sebenarnya terdapat cerita di sebaliknya.
Mungkinkah kerana gambar yang tersiar di laman ini atau pun kerana Dato' Norjan Khan Bahadar adalah orang Dato' Rafidah Aziz ?
Umum mengetahui Dato' Norjan Khan Bahadar adalah Timbalan Menteri di Jabatan Ketua Menteri dan orang yang paling dipercayai oleh Dato' Osu Sukam.
Di semenanjung Dato' Norjan Khan sememangnya ditakuti oleh sebahagian besar orang-orang kanan UMNO kerana pada beliaulah tersimpan segala memori kenangan di Sabah. Khasnya pada mereka yang tidak membawa pasangan ke Sabah, Dato' Norjan Khanlah yang menyediakan pasangan buat mereka. Sememangnya kami di Sabah amat menghormati dan melayan tetamu dengan baik.
Sayang sekali Dato' Norjan Khan tidak dapat menjadi Ketua Wanita UMNO Sabah seperti yang telah diceritakan dengan luasnya oleh Dato'Ketua Menteri Sabah sendiri.
Mungkin juga Orang UMNO disemenanjung takut rahsia mereka terbongkar dengan pelbagai skandal seks ?
Sekali lagi Dayang Mahani diselamatkan oleh suaminya yang tercinta Onn Ariffin diatas gambar yang tersiar.
Dato Onn Ariffin suami Dayang Mahani sebenarnya adalah orang Johor bukan orang Sabah. Beliau walaupun pernah memegang Setiausaha Agong USNO satu ketika dulu dan menjadi politik strategist untuk Tun Mustaffa sebenarnya adalah orang Dr. Mahathir. Kawan karibnya adalah Dato' Aziz Shamsuddin, Setiausaha Politik kepada Dr. Mahathir sendiri , sudah pasti mereka mahu Dayang Mahani terus kekal untuk mempertahankan matlamat dan keuntungan mereka.
Kepada yang ingin mendapatkan lebih lanjut tentang gambar di laman ini, ketegangan UMNO Sabah dan siapa Dato' Norjan Khan sebenarnya bolehlah menghubungi Dato' Onn Ariffin sendiri.
Nombor talipon : 08-8250838 ataupun : 019-3295216.
Semuga rakyat Sabah khasnya UMNO dapat gambaran yang jelas kenapa Dato' Norjan Khan tidak dapat jawatan Ketua Wanita Umno Sabah meskipun Dato' Ketua Menteri malahan Dato' Ketua Wanita UMNO Malaysia sendiri sudah menjanjikan pada kita.
Lihat Gambar Norjan
Gambar 1
Gambar 2
Aku rakyat Sabah yang tahuk.
Friday, December 29, 2000
Mega Projects In Sabah
KOTA KINABALU: Sabah Umno Wanita chief Datuk Dayang Mahani Tun Ahmad Raffae said what was once a dream in terms of development 37 years ago had now become a reality, and the people could expect more.
She pointed out there was no denying that tremendous development had been taking place in the State through the Barisan Nasional.
"We must take note that a lot of projects has been taking place in the State since the Barisan Nasional assumed control of the State Government," she told reporters paying her a Hari Raya Aidifitri visit at her residence in Luyang, near here, Wednesday.
These included revival of abandoned or delayed projects, as well as undertaking mega projects that the previous ruling party dared not implement while in confrontation with the Federal Government.
Another contributing factor was the entry of Umno into Sabah to stabilise the political situation in the State, and enhance mutual cooperation and understanding with the Federal government.
Mahani, who also heads the Sabah Affairs Bureau, said the people had to accept the fact that they were currently enjoying the benefits of the State being in the mainstream of national development.
Citing an example, she said travellers could never have imagined travelling to Kota Belud in less than an hour through one of the best roads in the country as they were experiencing now, as well as the coastal by-pass from the city to Tuaran via Sepangar.
Also, the 30-year wait for the completion of Beaufort-Sipitang and Beaufort-Kuala Penyu worth a total of RM300 million was now over, thus completing the Sabah side of the Pan-Borneo highway linking Brunei and Sarawak via Bandar Seri Begawan and Kuching.
Within six years since 1994, the road network throughout the whole state had been greatly enhanced through the upgrading of existing roads and construction of new ones under the 8th Malaysia Plan beginning next year, she added.
These included:
* Nabawan-Sapulut (RM130 million)
* Keningau-Nabawan (RM97 million)
* Beaufort-Tenom (RM400 million)
* Merotai-Kalabakan (RM80 million)
* Tawau Town-Airport (RM88 million)
* Kunak-Semporna coastal road - 45 km (RM90 million)
* Labuk-Sandakan (RM23 million)
* Sandakan-Sibuga by-pass (RM50 million)
* Kota Belud-Ranau by-pass
* Kalabakan-Sapulut-189km (RM400 million)
She pointed out there was no denying that tremendous development had been taking place in the State through the Barisan Nasional.
"We must take note that a lot of projects has been taking place in the State since the Barisan Nasional assumed control of the State Government," she told reporters paying her a Hari Raya Aidifitri visit at her residence in Luyang, near here, Wednesday.
These included revival of abandoned or delayed projects, as well as undertaking mega projects that the previous ruling party dared not implement while in confrontation with the Federal Government.
Another contributing factor was the entry of Umno into Sabah to stabilise the political situation in the State, and enhance mutual cooperation and understanding with the Federal government.
Mahani, who also heads the Sabah Affairs Bureau, said the people had to accept the fact that they were currently enjoying the benefits of the State being in the mainstream of national development.
Citing an example, she said travellers could never have imagined travelling to Kota Belud in less than an hour through one of the best roads in the country as they were experiencing now, as well as the coastal by-pass from the city to Tuaran via Sepangar.
Also, the 30-year wait for the completion of Beaufort-Sipitang and Beaufort-Kuala Penyu worth a total of RM300 million was now over, thus completing the Sabah side of the Pan-Borneo highway linking Brunei and Sarawak via Bandar Seri Begawan and Kuching.
Within six years since 1994, the road network throughout the whole state had been greatly enhanced through the upgrading of existing roads and construction of new ones under the 8th Malaysia Plan beginning next year, she added.
These included:
* Nabawan-Sapulut (RM130 million)
* Keningau-Nabawan (RM97 million)
* Beaufort-Tenom (RM400 million)
* Merotai-Kalabakan (RM80 million)
* Tawau Town-Airport (RM88 million)
* Kunak-Semporna coastal road - 45 km (RM90 million)
* Labuk-Sandakan (RM23 million)
* Sandakan-Sibuga by-pass (RM50 million)
* Kota Belud-Ranau by-pass
* Kalabakan-Sapulut-189km (RM400 million)
Monday, October 23, 2000
INTERNATIONAL ALERT TO SAVE SABAH RAINFORESTS FROM PULP AND PAPER PROJECT IN KALABAKAN
Sahabat Alam Malaysia
23rd October 2000
LOGGING AND FOREST CLEAREANCE OPERATION WITHOUT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT
3% OF SABAH'S LAND FOR GIANT PULP AND PAPER PROJECT
In Kalabakan, Tawau, Sabah, East Malaysia, a business venture between a State-owned company, Lions Group of Malaysia and the China Fuxing Pulp and Paper Industries of China will be developing a US1.1 billion plantation and pulp and paper mill project.
The project will necessitate the felling of 240,000 ha of natural forest to be replaced by a huge pulp and paper mill and a massive monoculture plantation of the Black Wattle trees (Acacia mangium) or also known as dry acacia or the mangium tree, a fast growing plant which is native to tropical Queensland, Australia. The size of this huge project, some 4 times the size of Singapore, will take up approximately 3% of Sabah and 6% of its remaining virgin forest. The mill is expected to process 750 tonnes of pulp a year.
The project is expected to be fully operational by 2005. Mooted by the Federal Government, it is said to be the single largest foreign investment in forest plantation and paper mill by China, which incidentally, has enforced a ban on logging in large swathes of its territory back home.
There are four important issues that the project raises.
Is the project adhering to Malaysia and Sabah's environmental law requirements?
Is the removal of a quarter of a million hectares of forest acceptable, in terms of damage to water, soil, wildlife, human livelihoods and the ecology system downstream?
How much pollution will the huge monocrop plantation and mill cause?
Is the project adhering to Malaysia and Sabah's environmental law requirements?
NO ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT FOR LOGGING
Under the Sabah Conservation of Environment (Prescribed Activities) Order 1999, any forest which is cleared for the felling of timber covering an area of 500ha or more or any development of forest plantation of 500ha or more requires an Environmental Impact assessment (EIA) to be done.
According to our interpretation of the law, three EIA reports are required for:
forest clearing for the establishment of the tree plantations
development of the tree plantations
Is the project adhering to Malaysia and Sabah's environmental law requirements?
Today, 12 000 ha of the land of the proposed project have already been logged without a single EIA done. The state-owned company, Innoprise Corporation Sdn Bhd is proceeding to log another 33 000 ha.
According to newspaper reports, the company claimed that it could not afford to wait for the EIA to be submitted. The company is only now in the midst of appointing a consultant to handle the EIA.
The company asserted that it need not carry out an EIA for the logging as the Sabah Conservation of Environment (Prescribed Activities) Order 1999, came into effect only in September 1999 while the company had already begun logging since 1998. Innoprise further asserted that it proceeded with the logging operation based on the Coup Permit from the Sabah Forestry Department in 1996. The company reportedly is planning to conduct two EIA reports only, one for the plantation, the other for the mill.
The Chief Minister of Sabah seemed to defend the legality of its state-owned company's operation. He too claimed that the logging operation was legally licensed in 1996, well before the State EIA requirement was enforced and in addition to that, the licence did not specify the need for an EIA.
Further shock came our way when the Sabah Forestry Department in their reply to our queries affirmed that they had indeed issued a Coup Permit for the company to log. According to the Department, in 1996, Benta Wawasan Sdn. Bhd (a wholly owned subsidiary of Innoprise Corporation) entered into a Tree Plantation Agreement with the State Government of Sabah to log 106,310 ha of the Reserve Forest of Gunung Bara/Kalabakan and develop it into a plantation. According to the Department, this agreement binds Benta Wawasan to observe a set of conditions pertaining to environmental protection and conservation. These conditions are claimed to be "functionally equivalent" with the EIA legal requirement.
Prior to the coming into force of the Sabah Conservation of Environment (Prescribed Activities) Order 1999, the Federal Government's Environment Quality Act 1974 and thsubsidiary law made pursuant to this called the Environmental Quality (Prescribed Activities) (Environmental Impact Assessment) Order 1987 instructs that all proposed logging activities intended to be carried out on land larger than 500 ha to require an EIA to be performed and approved before the commencement of the activities. This law is not being followed.
In a response to SAM's query, the Sabah Environmental Conservation Department said that the Federal law did not apply to Sabah as the project involved matters such as 'land' and 'forests' which are within the jurisdiction of the States. Malaysia operates under a Federal-State system, where there is a division of areas between the Federal legislature and the States'. The Sabah Government is clearly using a strict legal argument to maintain that no EIA is needed to log such a huge area of forests until they enforced their own law in 1999!
Worsening things up, on September 26, The Star, a national Malaysian daily, reported that the "conditions" stipulated in the Forestry Department licence on environmental protection are also being disregarded by the company.
According to The Star, the company has violated the restrictions that prohibit logging activities from taking place right to a river's bank or on slopes of more than 25 degrees and clearing of a slope of more than 15 degrees steep. The company also does not seem to maintain the required 20m buffer zone between development activities and the boundaries of a river catchment.
SAM is appalled at how the logging can proceed without the submission and approval of an EIA Report by the Department of Environmental Conservation of Sabah, when the logging is clearly for the pulp mill project. The Sabah Government should not fragment the various activities involved in establishing the pulp mill, viz. logging for the tree plantations, establishing the tree plantations and construction of the pulp mill. We are very troubled by the fragmented approach taken by the Sabah State Government to justify the lack of an EIA for the logging activities.
The purpose of an EIA prior to the commencement of any project is to assess the environmental impacts and ascertain if the mitigation measures proposed by the project developers are sufficient to minimise environmental damage. The cumulative impacts of the project as a whole should be taken into account. If foreseen environmental impacts are severe and the mitigation measures inadequate, the EIA must be rejected and the project should not be allowed to commence. Innoprise's actions seem to imply that they are confident that their two other EIAs (for the plantation and the mill) will be approved. This is legally questionable and environmentally risky.
The Sabah Government in allowing the logging to go on is making a mockery of the law and is undermining the EIA process. By allowing the logging to proceed without an EIA, the Sabah Government is completely disregarding the environmental impacts of the logging activities and is 'manipulating' the law.
Logging before agreement is signed
The most perplexing question about the issue is that as late as September, the commercial department of the Chinese Embassy in Kuala Lumpur reportedly maintained that "the project is still under negotiation." Nothing is finalised yet.
It is a great puzzle to us as to how this one joint venture project was allowed to commence its operation even before its own internal agreements are finalised; risking the area to be wasted, should the project fail to take-off.
In addition to that, Innoprise's claim that it had begun logging the area since 1998 raises another important question. The Memorandum of Understanding for the project was only signed in 1997 and an early agreement between the various joint-venture partners was signed in August 1999. How could have Innoprise begun the logging operation when even the first agreement between their business partners had not taken place?
ECOLOGICAL DAMAGE
Wildlife
The proposed project is situated in Sabah's biggest remaining block of continuous forest, sandwiched between two major conservation sites, the Danum Valley and the Maliau Basin. Both are classified as Class One Protection Areas allowing only scientific research and restricted activities such as sustainable ecotourism to take place in the area.
The entire area, a world-renowned biodiversity hotspot, contains significant populations of rare animals and plants. Elephants, orang utans, Sumatran rhinoceros, sunbears, gibbons, clouded leopards and the Bornean Bay cat and wild cattle (tembadau or banteng), once thought to be extinct, are all present. The forest probably contains somewhere in the region of 120 mammals, 280 birds, and more than 2500 tree species.
The proposed plantation scheme would assault this pristine environment, turning the remaining forests as "islands", restricting the movement of wildlife. This could potentially decimate their population. Wild animals are reported to have been sighted more often, probably fleeing from the logged area.
Does it make sense to annihilate this forest, the very area that has the best chance of being managed sustainably, when other forest areas in Sabah have been ravaged by fire to the point where natural forest management is impossible?
Erosion
The land of the proposed project is mostly steep, and felling for plantations will expose the soil to direct erosion by rainfall. Even a low rate of erosion, for example 25 tonnes per hectare per year, would result in more than 6 million tonnes of eroded material a year from the entire proposed plantation. A higher estimate of erosion at 100 tonnes per hectare per year would give 25 million tonnes of soil entering rivers every year.
What will the effects be on the price of water treatment for the villages downstream? Will excessive silt cause the catch of villagers who fish along the rivers to dwindle? Will there be greater flooding? Will the sediment deposited at the river estuaries eventually reach the coastal mangrove vegetation in Cowie Bay, depleting marine resources?
With only 12 000 ha logged, disastrous reports have already emerged. The lush Danum Valley has already been flooded in recent months.
Threats of fire, pests, wild animal and dry spells
In the 1980s, an Indonesian plantation of Leucena leucocephala was totally destroyed by insects. The Black Wattle trees that will be planted in Sabah are in the menu of 19 kinds of insects. The Black Wattle leaves also contain 43 percent protein, and have even been recommended as an excellent fodder for cattle. Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) are said to love the bark of this tree. Planting such a huge area of the tree slap in the middle of the biggest remaining habitat for Sabah's elephant population may be simply asking for trouble.
The plant is also said to be a thirsty crop that can absorb a lot of underground water, drawing down the water table and making the land drier.
Local microclimate will often dry and heat up once the rainforest is replaced with a plantation scheme. The drier mono-crop plantations will no longer be the cool, damp and heavily clouded woods.
Plantations burn easily. This is made more likely by the accumulation of dry, leathery leaf litter in such plantations.
POISONS FROM PULPING AND BLEACHING
The processes involved in pulp and paper industry are known to be highly damaging to the environment.
The use of chlorine in bleaching the pulp has caused the industry to be the third largest source of dioxin and its related compound in the world. This problem is further compounded by the fact that Malaysia still has no policy on dioxin and the laws to regulate its presence in the environment.
Furthermore about 300 chemical compounds have been identified in pulp and paper mill effluents. They are:
Organic pollutants and suspended solids.
Chlorophenolics and their transformation products
Acidic compounds
Other organochlorine products
Air emissions of pulp and paper mills are known to emit:
carbon dioxide (global warming)
hydrogen sulphide (rotten egg smell)
oxides of sulphur (acid rain), oxides of nitrogen
chloroform (possible carcinogen)
dioxins and furans
organochlorines
other volatile organics (toxic and precursors to ozone formation).
UNSUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC PLANNING
The area is proposed to be planted at about 20,000 hectares per year, with 32,000 hectares in the first year alone, according to Innoprise Corporation. Clearing at this rate is possible but re-planting is surely not. Even the biggest operator in Sabah is now re-planting up to 6,000 ha a year (less than a third of that proposed), after 15 years of experience.
The proposed plan would require 38 million seedlings to be planted in year one. In the coming years, 23 million seedlings would be planted annually.
The logging operation is certainly an irresponsible corporate decision when we consider the fact that the nursery to produce the seedlings for the plantation has not even been set up while 12 000 ha have been logged.
At the proposed rate, by the start of the project's fourth year, workers would embark on planting the routine load of 23 million seedlings, while taking care of the previous 85 million seedlings already planted over an area of 720 square kilometres, an area larger than Singapore. Can this really be done? It is obvious that the State is dangerously risking the creation of huge chunks of bare and uncovered land in what used to be a verdant rainwater-sponge.
As it is right now, swathes of bare earth are beginning to disfigure the once biodiversity hotspot and the rivers are already brown with silt.
We also must remember that if this estimated high replanting rate fails to be achieved, the mill would also face a shortage of pulp supply. Faced with this predicament, an expensive and huge mill would surely suffer huge losses. The mill then perhaps would have to import timber or pulp.
CALL FOR ACTION
It is for these environmental concerns that SAM has called the State Government of Sabah and the Federal Government to:
halt all further logging activities
take action against the parties that are responsible for logging the 12 000 ha of forest without an EIA.
undertake a comprehensive EIA for all three aforementioned components of the project
seek extensive and genuine public feedback from the public in relation to the reviewing of the EIA.
review as a whole the project for its overall justification, given the magnitude and scale of its environmental impacts.
Support our call for action
SAM appeals to all concerned groups and individuals to send all letters of concern to:
YAB Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad
Prime Minister of Malaysia
Pejabat Perdana Menteri Malaysia
Blok Utama, Kompleks Jabatan Perdana Menteri
Pusat Pentadbiran Kerajaan Persekutuan
62502 Putrajaya
Malaysia.
Fax : 603-8883444
Email : epu@jpm.my
YAB Datuk Seri Panglima Osu Haji Sukam
Chief Minister of Sabah
Tingkat 28 Bangunan Yayasan Sabah
Teluk Likas
88502 Kota Kinabalu
Sabah.
Malaysia.
Fax : 6088-435350
Email : ketuamenteri@sabah.gov.my
Mr. Eric Juin
Director
Department of Environmental Conservation
Tingkat 2 & 3
Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman
Beg Berkunci No. 2078
88999 Kota Kinabalu
Sabah
Fax : 6088-238120
Email : pgh.jkas@sabah.gov.my
Mr. Daniel K.S. Khiong
Director
Forestry Department of Sabah
Beg Berkunci 68
90009 Sandakan
Sabah
Malaysia
Fax : 6089-669170
Email : pengarah.htan@sabah.gov.my
Kindly request the State Government of Sabah and the Federal Government of Malaysia to take the actions that we have demanded above. Please send copies of your letters of concern to us at:
Sahabat Alam Malaysia
27 Lorong Maktab
10250 Penang
Malaysia.
Tel : 604-2276930
Fax: 604-2275705
Email: smidris@tm.net.my and meenaco@pd.jaring.my
23rd October 2000
LOGGING AND FOREST CLEAREANCE OPERATION WITHOUT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT
3% OF SABAH'S LAND FOR GIANT PULP AND PAPER PROJECT
In Kalabakan, Tawau, Sabah, East Malaysia, a business venture between a State-owned company, Lions Group of Malaysia and the China Fuxing Pulp and Paper Industries of China will be developing a US1.1 billion plantation and pulp and paper mill project.
The project will necessitate the felling of 240,000 ha of natural forest to be replaced by a huge pulp and paper mill and a massive monoculture plantation of the Black Wattle trees (Acacia mangium) or also known as dry acacia or the mangium tree, a fast growing plant which is native to tropical Queensland, Australia. The size of this huge project, some 4 times the size of Singapore, will take up approximately 3% of Sabah and 6% of its remaining virgin forest. The mill is expected to process 750 tonnes of pulp a year.
The project is expected to be fully operational by 2005. Mooted by the Federal Government, it is said to be the single largest foreign investment in forest plantation and paper mill by China, which incidentally, has enforced a ban on logging in large swathes of its territory back home.
There are four important issues that the project raises.
Is the project adhering to Malaysia and Sabah's environmental law requirements?
Is the removal of a quarter of a million hectares of forest acceptable, in terms of damage to water, soil, wildlife, human livelihoods and the ecology system downstream?
How much pollution will the huge monocrop plantation and mill cause?
Is the project adhering to Malaysia and Sabah's environmental law requirements?
NO ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT FOR LOGGING
Under the Sabah Conservation of Environment (Prescribed Activities) Order 1999, any forest which is cleared for the felling of timber covering an area of 500ha or more or any development of forest plantation of 500ha or more requires an Environmental Impact assessment (EIA) to be done.
According to our interpretation of the law, three EIA reports are required for:
forest clearing for the establishment of the tree plantations
development of the tree plantations
Is the project adhering to Malaysia and Sabah's environmental law requirements?
Today, 12 000 ha of the land of the proposed project have already been logged without a single EIA done. The state-owned company, Innoprise Corporation Sdn Bhd is proceeding to log another 33 000 ha.
According to newspaper reports, the company claimed that it could not afford to wait for the EIA to be submitted. The company is only now in the midst of appointing a consultant to handle the EIA.
The company asserted that it need not carry out an EIA for the logging as the Sabah Conservation of Environment (Prescribed Activities) Order 1999, came into effect only in September 1999 while the company had already begun logging since 1998. Innoprise further asserted that it proceeded with the logging operation based on the Coup Permit from the Sabah Forestry Department in 1996. The company reportedly is planning to conduct two EIA reports only, one for the plantation, the other for the mill.
The Chief Minister of Sabah seemed to defend the legality of its state-owned company's operation. He too claimed that the logging operation was legally licensed in 1996, well before the State EIA requirement was enforced and in addition to that, the licence did not specify the need for an EIA.
Further shock came our way when the Sabah Forestry Department in their reply to our queries affirmed that they had indeed issued a Coup Permit for the company to log. According to the Department, in 1996, Benta Wawasan Sdn. Bhd (a wholly owned subsidiary of Innoprise Corporation) entered into a Tree Plantation Agreement with the State Government of Sabah to log 106,310 ha of the Reserve Forest of Gunung Bara/Kalabakan and develop it into a plantation. According to the Department, this agreement binds Benta Wawasan to observe a set of conditions pertaining to environmental protection and conservation. These conditions are claimed to be "functionally equivalent" with the EIA legal requirement.
Prior to the coming into force of the Sabah Conservation of Environment (Prescribed Activities) Order 1999, the Federal Government's Environment Quality Act 1974 and thsubsidiary law made pursuant to this called the Environmental Quality (Prescribed Activities) (Environmental Impact Assessment) Order 1987 instructs that all proposed logging activities intended to be carried out on land larger than 500 ha to require an EIA to be performed and approved before the commencement of the activities. This law is not being followed.
In a response to SAM's query, the Sabah Environmental Conservation Department said that the Federal law did not apply to Sabah as the project involved matters such as 'land' and 'forests' which are within the jurisdiction of the States. Malaysia operates under a Federal-State system, where there is a division of areas between the Federal legislature and the States'. The Sabah Government is clearly using a strict legal argument to maintain that no EIA is needed to log such a huge area of forests until they enforced their own law in 1999!
Worsening things up, on September 26, The Star, a national Malaysian daily, reported that the "conditions" stipulated in the Forestry Department licence on environmental protection are also being disregarded by the company.
According to The Star, the company has violated the restrictions that prohibit logging activities from taking place right to a river's bank or on slopes of more than 25 degrees and clearing of a slope of more than 15 degrees steep. The company also does not seem to maintain the required 20m buffer zone between development activities and the boundaries of a river catchment.
SAM is appalled at how the logging can proceed without the submission and approval of an EIA Report by the Department of Environmental Conservation of Sabah, when the logging is clearly for the pulp mill project. The Sabah Government should not fragment the various activities involved in establishing the pulp mill, viz. logging for the tree plantations, establishing the tree plantations and construction of the pulp mill. We are very troubled by the fragmented approach taken by the Sabah State Government to justify the lack of an EIA for the logging activities.
The purpose of an EIA prior to the commencement of any project is to assess the environmental impacts and ascertain if the mitigation measures proposed by the project developers are sufficient to minimise environmental damage. The cumulative impacts of the project as a whole should be taken into account. If foreseen environmental impacts are severe and the mitigation measures inadequate, the EIA must be rejected and the project should not be allowed to commence. Innoprise's actions seem to imply that they are confident that their two other EIAs (for the plantation and the mill) will be approved. This is legally questionable and environmentally risky.
The Sabah Government in allowing the logging to go on is making a mockery of the law and is undermining the EIA process. By allowing the logging to proceed without an EIA, the Sabah Government is completely disregarding the environmental impacts of the logging activities and is 'manipulating' the law.
Logging before agreement is signed
The most perplexing question about the issue is that as late as September, the commercial department of the Chinese Embassy in Kuala Lumpur reportedly maintained that "the project is still under negotiation." Nothing is finalised yet.
It is a great puzzle to us as to how this one joint venture project was allowed to commence its operation even before its own internal agreements are finalised; risking the area to be wasted, should the project fail to take-off.
In addition to that, Innoprise's claim that it had begun logging the area since 1998 raises another important question. The Memorandum of Understanding for the project was only signed in 1997 and an early agreement between the various joint-venture partners was signed in August 1999. How could have Innoprise begun the logging operation when even the first agreement between their business partners had not taken place?
ECOLOGICAL DAMAGE
Wildlife
The proposed project is situated in Sabah's biggest remaining block of continuous forest, sandwiched between two major conservation sites, the Danum Valley and the Maliau Basin. Both are classified as Class One Protection Areas allowing only scientific research and restricted activities such as sustainable ecotourism to take place in the area.
The entire area, a world-renowned biodiversity hotspot, contains significant populations of rare animals and plants. Elephants, orang utans, Sumatran rhinoceros, sunbears, gibbons, clouded leopards and the Bornean Bay cat and wild cattle (tembadau or banteng), once thought to be extinct, are all present. The forest probably contains somewhere in the region of 120 mammals, 280 birds, and more than 2500 tree species.
The proposed plantation scheme would assault this pristine environment, turning the remaining forests as "islands", restricting the movement of wildlife. This could potentially decimate their population. Wild animals are reported to have been sighted more often, probably fleeing from the logged area.
Does it make sense to annihilate this forest, the very area that has the best chance of being managed sustainably, when other forest areas in Sabah have been ravaged by fire to the point where natural forest management is impossible?
Erosion
The land of the proposed project is mostly steep, and felling for plantations will expose the soil to direct erosion by rainfall. Even a low rate of erosion, for example 25 tonnes per hectare per year, would result in more than 6 million tonnes of eroded material a year from the entire proposed plantation. A higher estimate of erosion at 100 tonnes per hectare per year would give 25 million tonnes of soil entering rivers every year.
What will the effects be on the price of water treatment for the villages downstream? Will excessive silt cause the catch of villagers who fish along the rivers to dwindle? Will there be greater flooding? Will the sediment deposited at the river estuaries eventually reach the coastal mangrove vegetation in Cowie Bay, depleting marine resources?
With only 12 000 ha logged, disastrous reports have already emerged. The lush Danum Valley has already been flooded in recent months.
Threats of fire, pests, wild animal and dry spells
In the 1980s, an Indonesian plantation of Leucena leucocephala was totally destroyed by insects. The Black Wattle trees that will be planted in Sabah are in the menu of 19 kinds of insects. The Black Wattle leaves also contain 43 percent protein, and have even been recommended as an excellent fodder for cattle. Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) are said to love the bark of this tree. Planting such a huge area of the tree slap in the middle of the biggest remaining habitat for Sabah's elephant population may be simply asking for trouble.
The plant is also said to be a thirsty crop that can absorb a lot of underground water, drawing down the water table and making the land drier.
Local microclimate will often dry and heat up once the rainforest is replaced with a plantation scheme. The drier mono-crop plantations will no longer be the cool, damp and heavily clouded woods.
Plantations burn easily. This is made more likely by the accumulation of dry, leathery leaf litter in such plantations.
POISONS FROM PULPING AND BLEACHING
The processes involved in pulp and paper industry are known to be highly damaging to the environment.
The use of chlorine in bleaching the pulp has caused the industry to be the third largest source of dioxin and its related compound in the world. This problem is further compounded by the fact that Malaysia still has no policy on dioxin and the laws to regulate its presence in the environment.
Furthermore about 300 chemical compounds have been identified in pulp and paper mill effluents. They are:
Organic pollutants and suspended solids.
Chlorophenolics and their transformation products
Acidic compounds
Other organochlorine products
Air emissions of pulp and paper mills are known to emit:
carbon dioxide (global warming)
hydrogen sulphide (rotten egg smell)
oxides of sulphur (acid rain), oxides of nitrogen
chloroform (possible carcinogen)
dioxins and furans
organochlorines
other volatile organics (toxic and precursors to ozone formation).
UNSUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC PLANNING
The area is proposed to be planted at about 20,000 hectares per year, with 32,000 hectares in the first year alone, according to Innoprise Corporation. Clearing at this rate is possible but re-planting is surely not. Even the biggest operator in Sabah is now re-planting up to 6,000 ha a year (less than a third of that proposed), after 15 years of experience.
The proposed plan would require 38 million seedlings to be planted in year one. In the coming years, 23 million seedlings would be planted annually.
The logging operation is certainly an irresponsible corporate decision when we consider the fact that the nursery to produce the seedlings for the plantation has not even been set up while 12 000 ha have been logged.
At the proposed rate, by the start of the project's fourth year, workers would embark on planting the routine load of 23 million seedlings, while taking care of the previous 85 million seedlings already planted over an area of 720 square kilometres, an area larger than Singapore. Can this really be done? It is obvious that the State is dangerously risking the creation of huge chunks of bare and uncovered land in what used to be a verdant rainwater-sponge.
As it is right now, swathes of bare earth are beginning to disfigure the once biodiversity hotspot and the rivers are already brown with silt.
We also must remember that if this estimated high replanting rate fails to be achieved, the mill would also face a shortage of pulp supply. Faced with this predicament, an expensive and huge mill would surely suffer huge losses. The mill then perhaps would have to import timber or pulp.
CALL FOR ACTION
It is for these environmental concerns that SAM has called the State Government of Sabah and the Federal Government to:
halt all further logging activities
take action against the parties that are responsible for logging the 12 000 ha of forest without an EIA.
undertake a comprehensive EIA for all three aforementioned components of the project
seek extensive and genuine public feedback from the public in relation to the reviewing of the EIA.
review as a whole the project for its overall justification, given the magnitude and scale of its environmental impacts.
Support our call for action
SAM appeals to all concerned groups and individuals to send all letters of concern to:
YAB Datuk Seri Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad
Prime Minister of Malaysia
Pejabat Perdana Menteri Malaysia
Blok Utama, Kompleks Jabatan Perdana Menteri
Pusat Pentadbiran Kerajaan Persekutuan
62502 Putrajaya
Malaysia.
Fax : 603-8883444
Email : epu@jpm.my
YAB Datuk Seri Panglima Osu Haji Sukam
Chief Minister of Sabah
Tingkat 28 Bangunan Yayasan Sabah
Teluk Likas
88502 Kota Kinabalu
Sabah.
Malaysia.
Fax : 6088-435350
Email : ketuamenteri@sabah.gov.my
Mr. Eric Juin
Director
Department of Environmental Conservation
Tingkat 2 & 3
Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman
Beg Berkunci No. 2078
88999 Kota Kinabalu
Sabah
Fax : 6088-238120
Email : pgh.jkas@sabah.gov.my
Mr. Daniel K.S. Khiong
Director
Forestry Department of Sabah
Beg Berkunci 68
90009 Sandakan
Sabah
Malaysia
Fax : 6089-669170
Email : pengarah.htan@sabah.gov.my
Kindly request the State Government of Sabah and the Federal Government of Malaysia to take the actions that we have demanded above. Please send copies of your letters of concern to us at:
Sahabat Alam Malaysia
27 Lorong Maktab
10250 Penang
Malaysia.
Tel : 604-2276930
Fax: 604-2275705
Email: smidris@tm.net.my and meenaco@pd.jaring.my
Thursday, July 06, 2000
Angkatan Hebat not the firm leasing those vehicles
Daily Express
6 July 2000
KOTA KINABALU: Angkatan Hebat Sdn Bhd denied Wednesday it is involved in leasing vehicles to the Tawau and Sandakan municipal councils at exorbitant rentals.
A spokesman said when contacted that the controversial RM15,000-a-month (RM180,000 per year) Mercedes Benz that was leased to the Tawau Municipal Council for his use was under an arrangement made in a separate contract between the Ministry of Local Government and Housing and a private limited company.
The spokesman admitted that Angkatan hebat had been receiving countless inquiries from the public on the matter.
Tawau Council President Datuk Hamzah Amir had stressed on Monday that the car was an entitlement accorded in the Local Government Ordinance.
He was responding to a query by Sri Tanjung Assemblyman Samson Chin.
The Angkatan Hebat spokesman also pointed out that the rental of similar vehicles leased by the company to the State Government is actually 40 per cent less than the rate that was quoted for the TMC.
Angkatan Hebat began leasing vehicles to the State Govenrment in 1995 under a 20-year concession.
Warisan Harta Sabah Sdn Bhd, a subsidiary of the State Government, holds a 40 per cent stake in Angkatan Hebat.
Meanwhile, the Consumers Association of Sabah/Labuan (Cash) questioned whether the Council was acting in the interest of ratepayers when there was so much that need to be done in Tawau.
Its President Patrick Sindu said the Council is not being seen to be prudent with its spending, especially under the current economic climate.
"The Council should be placing greater emphasis on improving public services through the provision of additional facilities, considering that the national economy had not fully recovered yet," he said.
If the TMC could reap surplus profits, it could render assistance to other local authorities in resolving their financial constraints, he added.
"Hence the RM15,000 per month on rental of a Mercedes Benz for the use of the Council President is a waste of funds," he said.
"Visitors to Tawau have complained how dirty the town is. Imagine how many dustbins could have been acquired to make the municipality cleaner," he said.
It also noted reports that some other district councils could not afford to pay out bonuses and overtime expenses of their staff.
"It would save the Government a lot of money if the Council purchased its own car, instead of renting it at an exorbitant rate", he added.
Sindu urged the local authorities to be more proactive in their approach towards improving public services, in line with the Government's aspiration to serve the people better.
He regretted that there seemed to have been only lip service so far by many in Sabah, including politicians, to the Prime Minister's call to use the Malaysian car like the Proton Perdana.
6 July 2000
KOTA KINABALU: Angkatan Hebat Sdn Bhd denied Wednesday it is involved in leasing vehicles to the Tawau and Sandakan municipal councils at exorbitant rentals.
A spokesman said when contacted that the controversial RM15,000-a-month (RM180,000 per year) Mercedes Benz that was leased to the Tawau Municipal Council for his use was under an arrangement made in a separate contract between the Ministry of Local Government and Housing and a private limited company.
The spokesman admitted that Angkatan hebat had been receiving countless inquiries from the public on the matter.
Tawau Council President Datuk Hamzah Amir had stressed on Monday that the car was an entitlement accorded in the Local Government Ordinance.
He was responding to a query by Sri Tanjung Assemblyman Samson Chin.
The Angkatan Hebat spokesman also pointed out that the rental of similar vehicles leased by the company to the State Government is actually 40 per cent less than the rate that was quoted for the TMC.
Angkatan Hebat began leasing vehicles to the State Govenrment in 1995 under a 20-year concession.
Warisan Harta Sabah Sdn Bhd, a subsidiary of the State Government, holds a 40 per cent stake in Angkatan Hebat.
Meanwhile, the Consumers Association of Sabah/Labuan (Cash) questioned whether the Council was acting in the interest of ratepayers when there was so much that need to be done in Tawau.
Its President Patrick Sindu said the Council is not being seen to be prudent with its spending, especially under the current economic climate.
"The Council should be placing greater emphasis on improving public services through the provision of additional facilities, considering that the national economy had not fully recovered yet," he said.
If the TMC could reap surplus profits, it could render assistance to other local authorities in resolving their financial constraints, he added.
"Hence the RM15,000 per month on rental of a Mercedes Benz for the use of the Council President is a waste of funds," he said.
"Visitors to Tawau have complained how dirty the town is. Imagine how many dustbins could have been acquired to make the municipality cleaner," he said.
It also noted reports that some other district councils could not afford to pay out bonuses and overtime expenses of their staff.
"It would save the Government a lot of money if the Council purchased its own car, instead of renting it at an exorbitant rate", he added.
Sindu urged the local authorities to be more proactive in their approach towards improving public services, in line with the Government's aspiration to serve the people better.
He regretted that there seemed to have been only lip service so far by many in Sabah, including politicians, to the Prime Minister's call to use the Malaysian car like the Proton Perdana.
Thursday, November 25, 1999
IDS - Kajian Penyusunan Semula Struktur Organisasi Majlis Perbandaran Tawau
Institute for Development Studies (IDS) pernah membuat kajian terhadap Majlis Perbandaran Tawau pada tahun 1998 dan membuat laporan serta saranan seperti berikut:
Majlis Perbandaran Tawau (MPT) terletak dalam kawasan strategik kerana kedudukannya yang berdekatan dengan sempadan Indonesia dan Filipina. Ia mempunyai beberapa kriteria penting terutama dari segi keluasan, jumlah dan pertambahan populasi, masalah-masalah dan cabaran-cabaran perbandaran yang ia hadapi.
MPT mempunyai keluasan pentadbiran yang meliputi 2,390 batu persegi dan merupakan majlis perbandaran yang terluas di Malaysia. Selain daripada itu, mengikut kadar pertumbuhan penduduk di masa lalu, kawasan MPT mengalami pertambahan penduduk yang amat pesat. Ini berpunca dari pertambahan penduduk semulajadi dan penghijrahan penduduk dari negara-negara yang berhampiran ke kawasan ini.
Kepesatan pertambahan penduduk ini merupakan cabaran utama MPT kerana ia memberi kesan dari segi pencapaian objektif eksternal dan internal majlis terutama dalam aspek-aspek kawalan dan perancangan pembangunan, pemeliharaan alam sekitar, penyediaan infrastruktur dan penciptaan peluang-peluang ekonomi, keupayaan pengurusan, perjalanan pentadbiran majlis, pentadbiran bandar, perubahan peranan MPT dan tahap jangkaan orang ramai terhadap perkhidmatan majlis.
MPT juga menghadapi pelbagai cabaran lain antaranya :-
1. bagaimana untuk meningkatkan kerjasama dengan jabatan-jabatan dan agensi-agensi kerajaan lain dalam usahanya mencapai objektif-objektifnya;
2. bagaimana untuk mengeratkan hubungan dengan orang ramai;
3. bagaimana membuat dan melaksanakan dengan berkesan undang-undang kecil majlis yang bersesuaian dengan keperluan dan kehendak awam; dan
4. cabaran yang penting sekali adalah bagaimana untuk membina keupayaan organisasi majlis di semua lapisan pengurusan, pegawai dan kakitangan MPT terutama dari segi menguatkan kefahaman, pengetahuan, prestasi kerja dan perkhidmatan majlis.
Beberapa cadangan telah dikemukakan untuk mengemaskinikan struktur organisasi MPT dengan tujuan membantu MPT mencari kepelbagaian alternatif penyelesaian dan pilihan.
Cadangan-cadangan ini juga bertujuan memberi input kepada MPT dalam usahanya menangani kepelbagaian masalah yang timbul akibat perubahan tuntutan orang ramai, keadaan dan persekitaran. Perkara-perkara penting tersebut adalah seperti
berikut :-
I. Pada dasarnya tiada perubahan struktur yang dicadangkan bagi tiga jawatan tertinggi majlis;
II. Unit Perhubungan Awam dicadangkan ditukar nama kepada Bahagian Pembangunan Luar Bandar dan Perhubungan Awam, di mana Timbalan Presiden Majlis Perbandaran adalah lebih memokus kepada pembangunan di kawasan luar bandar dalam kawasan majlis di samping melaksanakan kerja-kerja penerangan;
III. Unit Hiasan Bandar dialihkan dari Bahagian Operasi dan Perkhidmatan ke Bahagian Pembangunan kerana tugas dan tanggungjawabnya berkaitan dengan pembangunan.
IV. nama “Pengurus Dewan” dicadangkan untuk ditukar kepada istilah lain seperti “Penyelenggara Dewan” kerana ia bercanggah dengan kuasa dan tanggungjawab yang terdapat pada “Pengurus Harta Benda”.
V. Pegawai undang-undang hendaklah diletakkan di bawah bahagiannya tersendiri. Bahagian Undang-undang yang dicadangkan memerlukan sekurang-kurangnya seorang lagi pegawai undang-undang.
VI. Sistem Komputer diletakkan di bawah Bahagian Pentadbiran dan Kewangan yang dikawal oleh seorang computer programmer dibantu oleh kakitangan komputer lain.
Beberapa isu dan masalah dalaman majlis yang harus diambil perhatian antaranya adalah :-
i. kebanyakan penyandang bagi tiga jawatan teratas majlis adalah terlalu dekat kepada usia persaraan. Ini membentuk tanggapan umum bahawa jawatan-jawatan tersebut adalah tempat untuk memberikan kenaikan pangkat atau penempatan seketika sementara menanti tempoh persaraan;
II. lantikan dan tempoh perkhidmatan yang terlalu singkat kerana penyandang boleh ditukarkan pada bila-bila masa. Kecenderungan sedemikian menggagalkan (defeat) usaha untuk memperlihatkan pencapaian yang hanya boleh dinilai selepas suatu jangka waktu yang mencukupi;
III. pertukaran presiden yang kerap meletakkan kepepimpinan dan situasi dalaman majlis dalam keadaan yang sukar, contohnya telah tiga kali kejadian di mana dalam MPT terdapat dua presiden pada suatu ketika;
IV. dari segi penilaian kakitangan, usaha dan kesungguhan pengurusan hendaklah ditingkatkan bagi meyakinkan kakitangan bahawa ganjaran dan kenaikan pangkat adalah berdasarkan kepada meritocracy dan bukan disebabkan oleh pengaruh elemen lain, contohnya kaitan atau pengaruh politik;
V. penekanan haruslah diberi kepada tingkat produktiviti. Dengan kata lain, penekanan penilaian dalam pencapaian haruslah berdasarkan kecemerlangan dalam profesion, prestasi output dan disiplin kerja;
VI. lebih banyak pergerakan ke atas harus dibuat dengan lebih pemberat dan keutamaan diberi kepada penyandang dari dalam MPT sendiri terutama untuk mengisi tiga jawatan tertinggi dalam majlis;
VII. perulangan agenda-agenda mesyuarat jawatankuasa-jawatankuasa kecil memerlukan penelitian dan pengkajian yang rapi dari pihak MPT kerana ia menunjuk kepada beberapa hal antaranya sama ada :-
? kes yang sama diperbincangkan dalam beberapa mesyuarat jawatankuasa kecil berasingan tidak diambil tindakan; atau
? jawatankuasa-jawatankuasa kecil itu mengalami pertindanan tugas dan dengan itu mungkin boleh digabungkan.
viii. terdapat juga indikasi kurangnya tahap kordinasi di antara bahagian-bahagian berasingan dalam MPT, division of labour yang tidak jelas yang menyebabkan banyak bypass dengan itu cenderung menyebabkan perselisihan faham di antara bahagian-bahagian yang berlainan;
ix. tidak ada langkah dan usaha yang konsisten dalam aspek pengemaskinian data-data yang berterusan;
x. sistem penguatkuasaan yang kurang berkesan antaranya berpunca dari kekurangan kakitangan penguatkuasa, status jumud jawatan penguatkuasa dan terlalu kerap terdapatnya campurtangan politik semasa yang boleh menggagalkan kejayaan penguatkuasaan undang-undang dan peraturan dalam kawasan majlis; dan
xi. proses pengkomputeran telah dilakukan, namun untuk dapat mencapai penggunaan dan faedah pada tahap optimum, ia memerlukan tenaga kakitangan yang terlatih dan cekap mengendalikan sistem komputer ini.
Analisa keseluruhan hasil pendapatan dan perbelanjaan majlis menjelaskan beberapa perkara utama. Pertama, pendapatan majlis adalah tidak stabil dan seringkali mengalami penurunan. Kedua, perolehan banyak bergantung kepada bantuan kerajaan dan pinjaman. Ketiga, perbelanjaan majlis yang semakin meningkat. Keempat, sistem pemungutan hasil yang tidak sistematik. Kelima, kekurangan maklumat mengenai pembayaran menyebabkan hasil tertunggak yang terkumpul adalah tinggi.
Keenam, banyak prospek dan punca-punca pendapatan lain dalam kawasan majlis yang tidak dapat dipungut atau dikenakan ke atas awam disebabkan antaranya oleh cakupan kuasa undang-undang kecil yang sempit dan ketiadaan unit penguatkuasa
yang terlatih dan berkesan, kekurangan legal power serta sokongan politik tempatan. Ketujuh, oleh kerana majlis selalu berada dalam keadaan defisit, perbelanjaan pembangunan bolehlah dikatakan tiada.
Bagi menangani masalah hasil yang tidak dapat dipungut adalah mustahak bagi MPT untuk mengkaji semula undang-undang kecilnya dengan tujuan :-
i. mencadangkan undang-undang kecil yang baru;
II. meluaskan skop undang-undang kecil yang sedia wujud supaya ia dapat mencakup dan mengenakan suatu bentuk kawalan kepada kegiatan-kegiatan dalam bidang kuasa majlis; dan
III. menguatkan, menambah new clauses and provisions dengan tujuan menambah legal power serta mengenakan suatu bentuk deterence kepada would-be offenders.
Penguatkuasaan undang-undang kecil dan peraturan-peraturan lain hendaklah dibuat dengan lebih ketat. Usaha haruslah diambil untuk meningkatkan kesedaran di kalangan orang ramai tentang perlunya pihak awam memberikan kerjasama kepada
majlis dalam semua bentuk penguatkuasaan demi kebaikan bersama.
Majlis juga harus meneliti bagaimana mengatasi kewujudan sebahagian besar pendatang asing (bukan pembayar cukai tetapi tetap menggunakan berbagai bentuk perkhidmatan dalam kawasan majlis perbandaran) supaya mereka dapat dicukai dan
dengan demikian tidak menjadi punca pendapatan yang tersia-sia.
Di samping itu, internal politics hendaklah dikurangkan dalam majlis dan usaha hendaklah dibuat untuk menjadikan line authority dalam majlis menjadi jelas. Majlis perlu mengadakan perubahan kepada pendekatannya dalam perkhidmatan, integrasi kegiatan-kegiatan majlis, pengoptimuman penggunaan sumber-sumber dan sistem jawatankuasanya. Terdapat juga keperluan untuk mengaplikasikan strategic management dalam majlis yakni memberikan tumpuan yang lebih kepada closer supervision of staff, lebih staff empowerment, more attainable mission, clearer vision, successful management of conflicts, co-ordination, decision making, planning and problem solving.
Penemuan penting lain antaranya adalah jangkaan awam yang tinggi terhadap majlis dan usaha-usaha penswastaan yang problematic. Adalah didapati bahawa aktiviti pengswastaan yang berlaku dalam majlis terjadi melalui forced and irrational
privatisation exercises yang menjadikannya one-sided and unprofitable joint venture activities with outsiders.
Kehilangan tanah majlis yang berterusan juga berlaku melalui manipulated agreement and contracts dengan pihak luar. Kegiatan penswastaan juga didapati bukan berdasarkan kepada kepentingan majlis di masa depan, tetapi bertujuan menguntungkan beberapa pihak tertentu. Oleh itu, adalah dicadangkan agar majlis diberikan kuasa untuk menentukan jenis perniagaan dan pelaburan serta pencarian alternatif baru pendapatan mengikut kebijaksanaan majlis dan bebas dari tekanan politik dan golongan berkepentingan lain.
Syarat kelayakan ahli-ahli majlis juga perlu ditinjau bagi membolehkan MPT mendapat ahli-ahli yang berpengalaman, berpendidikan dan profesional.
Majlis Perbandaran Tawau (MPT) terletak dalam kawasan strategik kerana kedudukannya yang berdekatan dengan sempadan Indonesia dan Filipina. Ia mempunyai beberapa kriteria penting terutama dari segi keluasan, jumlah dan pertambahan populasi, masalah-masalah dan cabaran-cabaran perbandaran yang ia hadapi.
MPT mempunyai keluasan pentadbiran yang meliputi 2,390 batu persegi dan merupakan majlis perbandaran yang terluas di Malaysia. Selain daripada itu, mengikut kadar pertumbuhan penduduk di masa lalu, kawasan MPT mengalami pertambahan penduduk yang amat pesat. Ini berpunca dari pertambahan penduduk semulajadi dan penghijrahan penduduk dari negara-negara yang berhampiran ke kawasan ini.
Kepesatan pertambahan penduduk ini merupakan cabaran utama MPT kerana ia memberi kesan dari segi pencapaian objektif eksternal dan internal majlis terutama dalam aspek-aspek kawalan dan perancangan pembangunan, pemeliharaan alam sekitar, penyediaan infrastruktur dan penciptaan peluang-peluang ekonomi, keupayaan pengurusan, perjalanan pentadbiran majlis, pentadbiran bandar, perubahan peranan MPT dan tahap jangkaan orang ramai terhadap perkhidmatan majlis.
MPT juga menghadapi pelbagai cabaran lain antaranya :-
1. bagaimana untuk meningkatkan kerjasama dengan jabatan-jabatan dan agensi-agensi kerajaan lain dalam usahanya mencapai objektif-objektifnya;
2. bagaimana untuk mengeratkan hubungan dengan orang ramai;
3. bagaimana membuat dan melaksanakan dengan berkesan undang-undang kecil majlis yang bersesuaian dengan keperluan dan kehendak awam; dan
4. cabaran yang penting sekali adalah bagaimana untuk membina keupayaan organisasi majlis di semua lapisan pengurusan, pegawai dan kakitangan MPT terutama dari segi menguatkan kefahaman, pengetahuan, prestasi kerja dan perkhidmatan majlis.
Beberapa cadangan telah dikemukakan untuk mengemaskinikan struktur organisasi MPT dengan tujuan membantu MPT mencari kepelbagaian alternatif penyelesaian dan pilihan.
Cadangan-cadangan ini juga bertujuan memberi input kepada MPT dalam usahanya menangani kepelbagaian masalah yang timbul akibat perubahan tuntutan orang ramai, keadaan dan persekitaran. Perkara-perkara penting tersebut adalah seperti
berikut :-
I. Pada dasarnya tiada perubahan struktur yang dicadangkan bagi tiga jawatan tertinggi majlis;
II. Unit Perhubungan Awam dicadangkan ditukar nama kepada Bahagian Pembangunan Luar Bandar dan Perhubungan Awam, di mana Timbalan Presiden Majlis Perbandaran adalah lebih memokus kepada pembangunan di kawasan luar bandar dalam kawasan majlis di samping melaksanakan kerja-kerja penerangan;
III. Unit Hiasan Bandar dialihkan dari Bahagian Operasi dan Perkhidmatan ke Bahagian Pembangunan kerana tugas dan tanggungjawabnya berkaitan dengan pembangunan.
IV. nama “Pengurus Dewan” dicadangkan untuk ditukar kepada istilah lain seperti “Penyelenggara Dewan” kerana ia bercanggah dengan kuasa dan tanggungjawab yang terdapat pada “Pengurus Harta Benda”.
V. Pegawai undang-undang hendaklah diletakkan di bawah bahagiannya tersendiri. Bahagian Undang-undang yang dicadangkan memerlukan sekurang-kurangnya seorang lagi pegawai undang-undang.
VI. Sistem Komputer diletakkan di bawah Bahagian Pentadbiran dan Kewangan yang dikawal oleh seorang computer programmer dibantu oleh kakitangan komputer lain.
Beberapa isu dan masalah dalaman majlis yang harus diambil perhatian antaranya adalah :-
i. kebanyakan penyandang bagi tiga jawatan teratas majlis adalah terlalu dekat kepada usia persaraan. Ini membentuk tanggapan umum bahawa jawatan-jawatan tersebut adalah tempat untuk memberikan kenaikan pangkat atau penempatan seketika sementara menanti tempoh persaraan;
II. lantikan dan tempoh perkhidmatan yang terlalu singkat kerana penyandang boleh ditukarkan pada bila-bila masa. Kecenderungan sedemikian menggagalkan (defeat) usaha untuk memperlihatkan pencapaian yang hanya boleh dinilai selepas suatu jangka waktu yang mencukupi;
III. pertukaran presiden yang kerap meletakkan kepepimpinan dan situasi dalaman majlis dalam keadaan yang sukar, contohnya telah tiga kali kejadian di mana dalam MPT terdapat dua presiden pada suatu ketika;
IV. dari segi penilaian kakitangan, usaha dan kesungguhan pengurusan hendaklah ditingkatkan bagi meyakinkan kakitangan bahawa ganjaran dan kenaikan pangkat adalah berdasarkan kepada meritocracy dan bukan disebabkan oleh pengaruh elemen lain, contohnya kaitan atau pengaruh politik;
V. penekanan haruslah diberi kepada tingkat produktiviti. Dengan kata lain, penekanan penilaian dalam pencapaian haruslah berdasarkan kecemerlangan dalam profesion, prestasi output dan disiplin kerja;
VI. lebih banyak pergerakan ke atas harus dibuat dengan lebih pemberat dan keutamaan diberi kepada penyandang dari dalam MPT sendiri terutama untuk mengisi tiga jawatan tertinggi dalam majlis;
VII. perulangan agenda-agenda mesyuarat jawatankuasa-jawatankuasa kecil memerlukan penelitian dan pengkajian yang rapi dari pihak MPT kerana ia menunjuk kepada beberapa hal antaranya sama ada :-
? kes yang sama diperbincangkan dalam beberapa mesyuarat jawatankuasa kecil berasingan tidak diambil tindakan; atau
? jawatankuasa-jawatankuasa kecil itu mengalami pertindanan tugas dan dengan itu mungkin boleh digabungkan.
viii. terdapat juga indikasi kurangnya tahap kordinasi di antara bahagian-bahagian berasingan dalam MPT, division of labour yang tidak jelas yang menyebabkan banyak bypass dengan itu cenderung menyebabkan perselisihan faham di antara bahagian-bahagian yang berlainan;
ix. tidak ada langkah dan usaha yang konsisten dalam aspek pengemaskinian data-data yang berterusan;
x. sistem penguatkuasaan yang kurang berkesan antaranya berpunca dari kekurangan kakitangan penguatkuasa, status jumud jawatan penguatkuasa dan terlalu kerap terdapatnya campurtangan politik semasa yang boleh menggagalkan kejayaan penguatkuasaan undang-undang dan peraturan dalam kawasan majlis; dan
xi. proses pengkomputeran telah dilakukan, namun untuk dapat mencapai penggunaan dan faedah pada tahap optimum, ia memerlukan tenaga kakitangan yang terlatih dan cekap mengendalikan sistem komputer ini.
Analisa keseluruhan hasil pendapatan dan perbelanjaan majlis menjelaskan beberapa perkara utama. Pertama, pendapatan majlis adalah tidak stabil dan seringkali mengalami penurunan. Kedua, perolehan banyak bergantung kepada bantuan kerajaan dan pinjaman. Ketiga, perbelanjaan majlis yang semakin meningkat. Keempat, sistem pemungutan hasil yang tidak sistematik. Kelima, kekurangan maklumat mengenai pembayaran menyebabkan hasil tertunggak yang terkumpul adalah tinggi.
Keenam, banyak prospek dan punca-punca pendapatan lain dalam kawasan majlis yang tidak dapat dipungut atau dikenakan ke atas awam disebabkan antaranya oleh cakupan kuasa undang-undang kecil yang sempit dan ketiadaan unit penguatkuasa
yang terlatih dan berkesan, kekurangan legal power serta sokongan politik tempatan. Ketujuh, oleh kerana majlis selalu berada dalam keadaan defisit, perbelanjaan pembangunan bolehlah dikatakan tiada.
Bagi menangani masalah hasil yang tidak dapat dipungut adalah mustahak bagi MPT untuk mengkaji semula undang-undang kecilnya dengan tujuan :-
i. mencadangkan undang-undang kecil yang baru;
II. meluaskan skop undang-undang kecil yang sedia wujud supaya ia dapat mencakup dan mengenakan suatu bentuk kawalan kepada kegiatan-kegiatan dalam bidang kuasa majlis; dan
III. menguatkan, menambah new clauses and provisions dengan tujuan menambah legal power serta mengenakan suatu bentuk deterence kepada would-be offenders.
Penguatkuasaan undang-undang kecil dan peraturan-peraturan lain hendaklah dibuat dengan lebih ketat. Usaha haruslah diambil untuk meningkatkan kesedaran di kalangan orang ramai tentang perlunya pihak awam memberikan kerjasama kepada
majlis dalam semua bentuk penguatkuasaan demi kebaikan bersama.
Majlis juga harus meneliti bagaimana mengatasi kewujudan sebahagian besar pendatang asing (bukan pembayar cukai tetapi tetap menggunakan berbagai bentuk perkhidmatan dalam kawasan majlis perbandaran) supaya mereka dapat dicukai dan
dengan demikian tidak menjadi punca pendapatan yang tersia-sia.
Di samping itu, internal politics hendaklah dikurangkan dalam majlis dan usaha hendaklah dibuat untuk menjadikan line authority dalam majlis menjadi jelas. Majlis perlu mengadakan perubahan kepada pendekatannya dalam perkhidmatan, integrasi kegiatan-kegiatan majlis, pengoptimuman penggunaan sumber-sumber dan sistem jawatankuasanya. Terdapat juga keperluan untuk mengaplikasikan strategic management dalam majlis yakni memberikan tumpuan yang lebih kepada closer supervision of staff, lebih staff empowerment, more attainable mission, clearer vision, successful management of conflicts, co-ordination, decision making, planning and problem solving.
Penemuan penting lain antaranya adalah jangkaan awam yang tinggi terhadap majlis dan usaha-usaha penswastaan yang problematic. Adalah didapati bahawa aktiviti pengswastaan yang berlaku dalam majlis terjadi melalui forced and irrational
privatisation exercises yang menjadikannya one-sided and unprofitable joint venture activities with outsiders.
Kehilangan tanah majlis yang berterusan juga berlaku melalui manipulated agreement and contracts dengan pihak luar. Kegiatan penswastaan juga didapati bukan berdasarkan kepada kepentingan majlis di masa depan, tetapi bertujuan menguntungkan beberapa pihak tertentu. Oleh itu, adalah dicadangkan agar majlis diberikan kuasa untuk menentukan jenis perniagaan dan pelaburan serta pencarian alternatif baru pendapatan mengikut kebijaksanaan majlis dan bebas dari tekanan politik dan golongan berkepentingan lain.
Syarat kelayakan ahli-ahli majlis juga perlu ditinjau bagi membolehkan MPT mendapat ahli-ahli yang berpengalaman, berpendidikan dan profesional.
Friday, September 17, 1999
Women feed Malaysian boom
Tens of thousands of Indonesian women work in Malaysia's booming economy as domestics and prostitutes. Often illegal, they have few rights. SIDNEY JONES visits them.
By 1995, Malaysia had become the largest importer of labour in Asia, with a foreign workforce, legal and illegal, estimated to be well over one million men and women. The vast majority were Indonesian, most were unskilled and most were illegal - that is, they had come without proper documentation or overstayed their visas in violation of Malaysia's immigration laws.
The presence of so many immigrants had become a major domestic political issue within Malaysia, a sensitive foreign policy question in Indonesian-Malaysian relations, and a growing human rights concern.
For and against
On the domestic side, the Malaysian government was under pressure from some sectors, notably the Malaysian Agricultural Producers Association and the construction industry as well as from some state governments such as Johor, to bring in more workers.
At the same time there was growing pressure from the Malaysian Trade Unions Congress to stop the flow, on the grounds that migrants were depressing the wage structure and removing incentives to attract Malaysian workers.
The Malaysian Chinese Association and the largely Chinese Democratic Action Party (DAP) were concerned that the influx of Indonesians could alter the sensitive racial and ethnic balance.
Meanwhile officials of both the ruling party, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), and the opposition Islamic Party (Parti Islam or PAS), often saw the Indonesians as a potential boost to the Malay side. Passing out permanent residency cards to illegal Indonesian workers during election campaigns became a particularly notorious practice in the eastern Malaysian state of Sabah, on the northeastern coast of the island of Borneo.
By the mid-1980s, the Malaysian public, like its counterpart in other labour-receiving countries, was beginning to hold immigrants responsible for a rise in crime, prostitution and other social ills. This made it imperative for national politicians to be seen to be protecting the country's borders by detaining and deporting workers who lacked proper documents.
Abuses
Migrant workers suffer from a range of abuses. Between 1990 and 1995, some 500 illegal workers are estimated to have drowned in the Straits of Malacca while trying to reach or return from Malaysia. Others suffer from frequent illegal detention, forced labour and torture.
The remainder of this article focusses only on Indonesian women. Poniyah binti Winarto, aged twenty, was a single woman from Central Java. In early 1994, she had come to Malaysia legally through an Indonesian agency. She had paid RM1,000 (AU$550) to get to Penang from Jakarta and, through a Penang-based Malaysian agency called Pelita Baru Sdn Bhd, was placed with a Chinese family in Petaling Jaya, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur.
For the next ten months, she worked eighteen-hour days without pay, although her salary was supposed to have been RM300 (AU$165) a month. Her employers, Mr and Mrs Liu, kept her passport, and she was not allowed to leave the house. She could have an hour off each day but never had a day off. She was not allowed to send any letters out of the house, and could not contact the agency or members of her family.
Run away
In November 1994, she decided to run away and met an Indian man who promised to help her in exchange for RM300. She took the money from Mrs Liu's purse and gave it to the man, but he just took it and never came back. When Mrs Liu discovered that her money was missing, she accused Poniyah of stealing RM1,000. She began steadily inflating the amount until by the next morning, the amount allegedly stolen was up to RM5,000.
At the same time, her employers took pliers and pinched her midriff and her nipples with the pliers, and began pulling out her hair. They also hit her on the ankles with a ceramic mug. The use of pliers and the systematic depilation continued until February 9, 1995, when with the help of another maid working at the house, she managed to escape and report to the local police station.
The police took down her report, then got her to University Hospital in Kuala Lumpur and called a women's organisation to help her. By that time she was almost bald, and there were scars of the pliers all over her body. Her nipples had been pinched until they bled. Poniyah was able to get her passport back, but no charges were ever brought against the Lius.
Exploitation
Women domestic workers around the world are less protected and may face greater exploitation than any other group of migrants for several reasons. The fact that they live in their employees' homes means that they are separated from other workers and do not have witnesses, or the protection of others, in cases of inhumane working conditions or sexual abuse. The boundary between work and leisure is often blurred, if it exists at all, and many women routinely work fifteen-hour days and longer.
Illegal confinement to the house is facilitated by the practice of employers holding on to the women's passports for safekeeping and occasionally as a check against escape. Many countries require employers to deposit a large security bond against possible illicit activities of the foreign workers, giving the employers the incentive to restrict domestic workers to the house as much as possible. Domestic workers are also often specifically excluded from labour legislation and government policies designed to safeguard workers against abuse.
Negative
All of these factors are operative in the case of Indonesian domestic workers in Malaysia, with the added problems that many of the women are poorly educated with no more than an elementary school education, and many are in Malaysia illegally. Their difficulties are exacerbated by the fact that migrant women tend to be viewed in a negative light by both Indonesian and Malaysian officials, despite the fact that they are major sources of income for both through recruitment fees and the foreign workers levy respectively.
Indonesian officials we spoke with portrayed single women who worked in Malaysia as social misfits who could not get a husband or who had personal problems at home that prompted them to leave. (Male migrants, on the other hand, were seen as adventurous and entrepreneurial). From their statements in the press, many Malaysian officials appear to view maids, particularly Filipinas but other nationalities as well, as potential prostitutes, and round-ups of foreign women are conducted not just in the name of stopping illegal immigration but stopping vice as well.
Trafficking
There is in fact a link between domestic service and prostitution among Indonesian women, but it is not the one Malaysian officials are making. As the demand for maids increases and more and more Indonesian women go to Malaysia, it becomes easier for traffickers in women to make their victims believe the promises of good jobs with nice families at high wages.
Particularly in East Java, where much of the trafficking is focussed, a young woman who is regaled with stories of the good life in Malaysia can often see direct evidence of the wealth to be made from others in her village who have worked as maids. She has no way of distinguishing between the tekong recruiting illegally for maids, and the trafficker seeking women for brothels. Indeed, it may be a Malaysian agent who determines who goes to brothels and who goes into domestic service from among the women he receives from the tekong.
Demand
The demand for maids in Malaysia has skyrocketed in recent years, as more and more middle class Malaysian women enter the labour force and need someone to look after their children. The number of Indonesians legally registered as domestic workers rose from 39,112 in 1993 to 57,563 in August 1995, out of 124,400 legal foreign domestic workers in the country. The number of Indonesian domestics was more than double the number of legal Filipina maids, according to official Malaysian statistics.
The demand for Indonesian women was already high by 1992, as evidenced by companies set up exclusively to send or recruit Indonesian domestic workers in both Indonesia and Malaysia. A company in Pekanbaru was sending 500 Indonesians a month to Malaysia, 400 of them women and almost all of those domestic workers.
The overwhelming majority of the women recruited for work as domestics are Javanese, but Sumatrans and Madurese are also well- represented. Recruitment of women in Kalimantan also has been stepped up as the demand for domestic workers has increased in Sabah and Sarawak. Not infrequently, women are recruited, taken illegally to Malaysia, and held by the Malaysian agent who waits for the highest bidder, who might be a sawmill owner, a family needing a domestic worker, or a brothel owner.
Assistance
Many women are treated well and paid regularly, but the nature of domestic service does render women particularly vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.
One of the few organisations in Malaysia that provides assistance to Indonesian workers, the Indonesian Workers Welfare Association or Persatuan Kebajikan Anak Indonesia (PKAI) in Kuala Lumpur, received 212 complaints between February 1994 and September 1995. Of those, 30.6% were registered as 'failure to pay wages', and a third of those were lodged by domestic workers. But 'failure to pay wages' was usually short-hand for a much more complex set of problems as some of the entries in PKAI's log book illustrate.
Eti
One case reported in September 1995 involved an Indonesian domestic worker named Eti. At the beginning of August 1994, Eti, aged thirty-two, left her home in Malang, East Java and registered with a recruitment agency, PT Duta Ananda in Jakarta, to work in Sarawak as a maid. Two weeks later, after paying Rp500,000 (AU$250), she was sent by ship to Pontianak in West Kalimantan, together with dozens of other migrants.
After a week in Pontianak, she was taken to Sarawak via the border crossing of Entikong, and put to work as a maid in the home of a Malaysian recruiting agent in Kuching. She was promised a salary of RM230 (AU$130) a month and a two-year contract. But she found herself working from 4.30 am until 9.00 pm without a break, and forbidden to go outside the house. When her employers went out, they locked the doors from the outside. They also placed a lock on the telephone, so Eti could not call anyone for help.
In October 1995, after a year of working under such conditions without receiving any wages at all, Eti finally managed to call the Indonesian consulate in Kuching after her employers went out and forgot to lock the telephone. The consulate managed to get the employers to pay ten months of wages but at 50% of the promised rate. The other two months, they said, were deducted to pay the costs incurred by PT Duta Ananda in bringing Eti to Malaysia.
Many Indonesian agents simply collect women and turn them over to their Malaysian counterparts. The women themselves have no idea who they will be working for, or where in Malaysia they will end up. They place total faith in their recruiter, who is often an acquaintance or friend of the family, to take care of them.
Prostitution
The rise in the Malaysian demand for Indonesian maids has been accompanied by an apparent increase in cases of trafficking of Indonesian girls and women into Malaysia for prostitution - apparent because no statistics are available on such a sensitive issue, and the number of articles appearing in the press of both countries is only a guide. (The rise in the number of Indonesian male migrants may also be a factor in the apparent increase).
The pattern of trafficking is all too familiar. It is virtually identical to that of Burmese women trafficked into Thailand or Nepali women into India. A friend or a relative, acting as an agent or a pimp, approaches a young woman, almost always from East Java, although there has been some trafficking of women from Kalimantan into Sabah.
The agent speaks in glowing terms of the money to be made in Malaysia from working in a hotel or a restaurant. The young woman, usually aware of other women in her village who have returned from Malaysia with consumer goods, agrees to go. The usual route is bus to Surabaya, plane or boat to Ujung Pandang, Ujung Pandang to Pare-Pare, across to Nunukan in East Kalimantan, and then into Tawau, Sabah. There the women end up locked in one of the seedy-looking brothels near the bus terminal.
Tawau
In June 1992, nine young women, aged sixteen to twenty-two, were found locked in Hotel Tawau where they had been forced to work as prostitutes. They had been there for two months when two of the women managed to escape and report to the Indonesian consulate. For the two months, they had not been given food if they refused to take clients, and were kept under constant guard.
The nine women had been recruited by an agent based in Tuban, who promised them all good jobs as waitresses. When they had arrived at the Plaza Tawau hotel, they were sold to pimps. A woman named Yayuk, from Probolinggo, East Java, was sold for RM1,500 (AU$825). The women told police that some forty Indonesian women were kept under lock and key at the hotel by eight pimps.
At the same time that the story of the nine women surfaced, police in Tarakan, East Kalimantan, reported foiling four other cases of trafficking. A waiter from the Plaza Tawau hotel was caught in Tarakan trying to smuggle two women from Sidoarjo and Bojonegoro, East Java. Both had been promised work in a resort hotel in Lahad Datu, Sabah. The other women from Kediri and Sidoarjo were rescued from a pimp who was bringing them to a brothel called the Chester Inn in Tawau. Ten cases of trafficking of women into Tawau had been reported in 1991, and the journalist who reported the new cases wrote that the number was rising.
Sidney Jones is regional director of Human Rights Watch for Asia. This article is extracted from a report to the Canberra INFID conference.
By 1995, Malaysia had become the largest importer of labour in Asia, with a foreign workforce, legal and illegal, estimated to be well over one million men and women. The vast majority were Indonesian, most were unskilled and most were illegal - that is, they had come without proper documentation or overstayed their visas in violation of Malaysia's immigration laws.
The presence of so many immigrants had become a major domestic political issue within Malaysia, a sensitive foreign policy question in Indonesian-Malaysian relations, and a growing human rights concern.
For and against
On the domestic side, the Malaysian government was under pressure from some sectors, notably the Malaysian Agricultural Producers Association and the construction industry as well as from some state governments such as Johor, to bring in more workers.
At the same time there was growing pressure from the Malaysian Trade Unions Congress to stop the flow, on the grounds that migrants were depressing the wage structure and removing incentives to attract Malaysian workers.
The Malaysian Chinese Association and the largely Chinese Democratic Action Party (DAP) were concerned that the influx of Indonesians could alter the sensitive racial and ethnic balance.
Meanwhile officials of both the ruling party, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), and the opposition Islamic Party (Parti Islam or PAS), often saw the Indonesians as a potential boost to the Malay side. Passing out permanent residency cards to illegal Indonesian workers during election campaigns became a particularly notorious practice in the eastern Malaysian state of Sabah, on the northeastern coast of the island of Borneo.
By the mid-1980s, the Malaysian public, like its counterpart in other labour-receiving countries, was beginning to hold immigrants responsible for a rise in crime, prostitution and other social ills. This made it imperative for national politicians to be seen to be protecting the country's borders by detaining and deporting workers who lacked proper documents.
Abuses
Migrant workers suffer from a range of abuses. Between 1990 and 1995, some 500 illegal workers are estimated to have drowned in the Straits of Malacca while trying to reach or return from Malaysia. Others suffer from frequent illegal detention, forced labour and torture.
The remainder of this article focusses only on Indonesian women. Poniyah binti Winarto, aged twenty, was a single woman from Central Java. In early 1994, she had come to Malaysia legally through an Indonesian agency. She had paid RM1,000 (AU$550) to get to Penang from Jakarta and, through a Penang-based Malaysian agency called Pelita Baru Sdn Bhd, was placed with a Chinese family in Petaling Jaya, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur.
For the next ten months, she worked eighteen-hour days without pay, although her salary was supposed to have been RM300 (AU$165) a month. Her employers, Mr and Mrs Liu, kept her passport, and she was not allowed to leave the house. She could have an hour off each day but never had a day off. She was not allowed to send any letters out of the house, and could not contact the agency or members of her family.
Run away
In November 1994, she decided to run away and met an Indian man who promised to help her in exchange for RM300. She took the money from Mrs Liu's purse and gave it to the man, but he just took it and never came back. When Mrs Liu discovered that her money was missing, she accused Poniyah of stealing RM1,000. She began steadily inflating the amount until by the next morning, the amount allegedly stolen was up to RM5,000.
At the same time, her employers took pliers and pinched her midriff and her nipples with the pliers, and began pulling out her hair. They also hit her on the ankles with a ceramic mug. The use of pliers and the systematic depilation continued until February 9, 1995, when with the help of another maid working at the house, she managed to escape and report to the local police station.
The police took down her report, then got her to University Hospital in Kuala Lumpur and called a women's organisation to help her. By that time she was almost bald, and there were scars of the pliers all over her body. Her nipples had been pinched until they bled. Poniyah was able to get her passport back, but no charges were ever brought against the Lius.
Exploitation
Women domestic workers around the world are less protected and may face greater exploitation than any other group of migrants for several reasons. The fact that they live in their employees' homes means that they are separated from other workers and do not have witnesses, or the protection of others, in cases of inhumane working conditions or sexual abuse. The boundary between work and leisure is often blurred, if it exists at all, and many women routinely work fifteen-hour days and longer.
Illegal confinement to the house is facilitated by the practice of employers holding on to the women's passports for safekeeping and occasionally as a check against escape. Many countries require employers to deposit a large security bond against possible illicit activities of the foreign workers, giving the employers the incentive to restrict domestic workers to the house as much as possible. Domestic workers are also often specifically excluded from labour legislation and government policies designed to safeguard workers against abuse.
Negative
All of these factors are operative in the case of Indonesian domestic workers in Malaysia, with the added problems that many of the women are poorly educated with no more than an elementary school education, and many are in Malaysia illegally. Their difficulties are exacerbated by the fact that migrant women tend to be viewed in a negative light by both Indonesian and Malaysian officials, despite the fact that they are major sources of income for both through recruitment fees and the foreign workers levy respectively.
Indonesian officials we spoke with portrayed single women who worked in Malaysia as social misfits who could not get a husband or who had personal problems at home that prompted them to leave. (Male migrants, on the other hand, were seen as adventurous and entrepreneurial). From their statements in the press, many Malaysian officials appear to view maids, particularly Filipinas but other nationalities as well, as potential prostitutes, and round-ups of foreign women are conducted not just in the name of stopping illegal immigration but stopping vice as well.
Trafficking
There is in fact a link between domestic service and prostitution among Indonesian women, but it is not the one Malaysian officials are making. As the demand for maids increases and more and more Indonesian women go to Malaysia, it becomes easier for traffickers in women to make their victims believe the promises of good jobs with nice families at high wages.
Particularly in East Java, where much of the trafficking is focussed, a young woman who is regaled with stories of the good life in Malaysia can often see direct evidence of the wealth to be made from others in her village who have worked as maids. She has no way of distinguishing between the tekong recruiting illegally for maids, and the trafficker seeking women for brothels. Indeed, it may be a Malaysian agent who determines who goes to brothels and who goes into domestic service from among the women he receives from the tekong.
Demand
The demand for maids in Malaysia has skyrocketed in recent years, as more and more middle class Malaysian women enter the labour force and need someone to look after their children. The number of Indonesians legally registered as domestic workers rose from 39,112 in 1993 to 57,563 in August 1995, out of 124,400 legal foreign domestic workers in the country. The number of Indonesian domestics was more than double the number of legal Filipina maids, according to official Malaysian statistics.
The demand for Indonesian women was already high by 1992, as evidenced by companies set up exclusively to send or recruit Indonesian domestic workers in both Indonesia and Malaysia. A company in Pekanbaru was sending 500 Indonesians a month to Malaysia, 400 of them women and almost all of those domestic workers.
The overwhelming majority of the women recruited for work as domestics are Javanese, but Sumatrans and Madurese are also well- represented. Recruitment of women in Kalimantan also has been stepped up as the demand for domestic workers has increased in Sabah and Sarawak. Not infrequently, women are recruited, taken illegally to Malaysia, and held by the Malaysian agent who waits for the highest bidder, who might be a sawmill owner, a family needing a domestic worker, or a brothel owner.
Assistance
Many women are treated well and paid regularly, but the nature of domestic service does render women particularly vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.
One of the few organisations in Malaysia that provides assistance to Indonesian workers, the Indonesian Workers Welfare Association or Persatuan Kebajikan Anak Indonesia (PKAI) in Kuala Lumpur, received 212 complaints between February 1994 and September 1995. Of those, 30.6% were registered as 'failure to pay wages', and a third of those were lodged by domestic workers. But 'failure to pay wages' was usually short-hand for a much more complex set of problems as some of the entries in PKAI's log book illustrate.
Eti
One case reported in September 1995 involved an Indonesian domestic worker named Eti. At the beginning of August 1994, Eti, aged thirty-two, left her home in Malang, East Java and registered with a recruitment agency, PT Duta Ananda in Jakarta, to work in Sarawak as a maid. Two weeks later, after paying Rp500,000 (AU$250), she was sent by ship to Pontianak in West Kalimantan, together with dozens of other migrants.
After a week in Pontianak, she was taken to Sarawak via the border crossing of Entikong, and put to work as a maid in the home of a Malaysian recruiting agent in Kuching. She was promised a salary of RM230 (AU$130) a month and a two-year contract. But she found herself working from 4.30 am until 9.00 pm without a break, and forbidden to go outside the house. When her employers went out, they locked the doors from the outside. They also placed a lock on the telephone, so Eti could not call anyone for help.
In October 1995, after a year of working under such conditions without receiving any wages at all, Eti finally managed to call the Indonesian consulate in Kuching after her employers went out and forgot to lock the telephone. The consulate managed to get the employers to pay ten months of wages but at 50% of the promised rate. The other two months, they said, were deducted to pay the costs incurred by PT Duta Ananda in bringing Eti to Malaysia.
Many Indonesian agents simply collect women and turn them over to their Malaysian counterparts. The women themselves have no idea who they will be working for, or where in Malaysia they will end up. They place total faith in their recruiter, who is often an acquaintance or friend of the family, to take care of them.
Prostitution
The rise in the Malaysian demand for Indonesian maids has been accompanied by an apparent increase in cases of trafficking of Indonesian girls and women into Malaysia for prostitution - apparent because no statistics are available on such a sensitive issue, and the number of articles appearing in the press of both countries is only a guide. (The rise in the number of Indonesian male migrants may also be a factor in the apparent increase).
The pattern of trafficking is all too familiar. It is virtually identical to that of Burmese women trafficked into Thailand or Nepali women into India. A friend or a relative, acting as an agent or a pimp, approaches a young woman, almost always from East Java, although there has been some trafficking of women from Kalimantan into Sabah.
The agent speaks in glowing terms of the money to be made in Malaysia from working in a hotel or a restaurant. The young woman, usually aware of other women in her village who have returned from Malaysia with consumer goods, agrees to go. The usual route is bus to Surabaya, plane or boat to Ujung Pandang, Ujung Pandang to Pare-Pare, across to Nunukan in East Kalimantan, and then into Tawau, Sabah. There the women end up locked in one of the seedy-looking brothels near the bus terminal.
Tawau
In June 1992, nine young women, aged sixteen to twenty-two, were found locked in Hotel Tawau where they had been forced to work as prostitutes. They had been there for two months when two of the women managed to escape and report to the Indonesian consulate. For the two months, they had not been given food if they refused to take clients, and were kept under constant guard.
The nine women had been recruited by an agent based in Tuban, who promised them all good jobs as waitresses. When they had arrived at the Plaza Tawau hotel, they were sold to pimps. A woman named Yayuk, from Probolinggo, East Java, was sold for RM1,500 (AU$825). The women told police that some forty Indonesian women were kept under lock and key at the hotel by eight pimps.
At the same time that the story of the nine women surfaced, police in Tarakan, East Kalimantan, reported foiling four other cases of trafficking. A waiter from the Plaza Tawau hotel was caught in Tarakan trying to smuggle two women from Sidoarjo and Bojonegoro, East Java. Both had been promised work in a resort hotel in Lahad Datu, Sabah. The other women from Kediri and Sidoarjo were rescued from a pimp who was bringing them to a brothel called the Chester Inn in Tawau. Ten cases of trafficking of women into Tawau had been reported in 1991, and the journalist who reported the new cases wrote that the number was rising.
Sidney Jones is regional director of Human Rights Watch for Asia. This article is extracted from a report to the Canberra INFID conference.
Thursday, January 07, 1999
Yong Teck Lee Keeps Singing A Different Tune
Malaysia.net
Wed, 07 Jan 1998
It was revealed in court yesterday that about 5 million acres of forest
was signed away to companies through FMUs by Yong Teck Lee leaving only
about 800,000 hectares of 2nd class forest.
No criteria was set! How are requirements to be enforced? How were the
companies chosen? Why the hurry? Why 100 years?
The 'Jungle-Cabinet' of Yong (Ghapur Salleh, Pandikar and Yong) decided
on the recepients without even considering the then Conservator of
Forest's views and input - infact he was technically sacked and sent off
on a 'timbuctoo-journey' to a non-existent post in a non-government
entity. Why? Was Ag.Tengah, the then Conservator and (court-rulling)
still the rightful one, in Yong's way?
Were the NBT shares bought by Warisan Harta actually kick-backs from
certain parties (recepients of FMU schemes) to Yong and his associates
in the 'jungle-cabinet'?
It might explain why the MAD RUSH by Warisan Harta to purchase the
shares before they crashed and made the 'kick-backs' worthless.
Yong has still to explain the privatisation of government vehicles to
Angkatan Hebat to cut costs. He was the Finance Minister then.
The government has ended-up spending 4 to 5 times the amount previously
spent by the government.What kind of ECONOMICS was that?
His 'group' obviously has 30% interest in Angkatan Hebat.
But Yong Teck Lee refuses to give explainations!
He his more concerned in attacking his critics in any and all ways he
can - threatening them and sueing them (sounds familiar?).
One wonders whether the objective of the Anti Corruption Agency (ACA) in
Malaysia is to go after the culprits or find ways to clear culprits with
political connections?!?
Wed, 07 Jan 1998
It was revealed in court yesterday that about 5 million acres of forest
was signed away to companies through FMUs by Yong Teck Lee leaving only
about 800,000 hectares of 2nd class forest.
No criteria was set! How are requirements to be enforced? How were the
companies chosen? Why the hurry? Why 100 years?
The 'Jungle-Cabinet' of Yong (Ghapur Salleh, Pandikar and Yong) decided
on the recepients without even considering the then Conservator of
Forest's views and input - infact he was technically sacked and sent off
on a 'timbuctoo-journey' to a non-existent post in a non-government
entity. Why? Was Ag.Tengah, the then Conservator and (court-rulling)
still the rightful one, in Yong's way?
Were the NBT shares bought by Warisan Harta actually kick-backs from
certain parties (recepients of FMU schemes) to Yong and his associates
in the 'jungle-cabinet'?
It might explain why the MAD RUSH by Warisan Harta to purchase the
shares before they crashed and made the 'kick-backs' worthless.
Yong has still to explain the privatisation of government vehicles to
Angkatan Hebat to cut costs. He was the Finance Minister then.
The government has ended-up spending 4 to 5 times the amount previously
spent by the government.What kind of ECONOMICS was that?
His 'group' obviously has 30% interest in Angkatan Hebat.
But Yong Teck Lee refuses to give explainations!
He his more concerned in attacking his critics in any and all ways he
can - threatening them and sueing them (sounds familiar?).
One wonders whether the objective of the Anti Corruption Agency (ACA) in
Malaysia is to go after the culprits or find ways to clear culprits with
political connections?!?
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