Wealth of the land for whom?

13Friday

Press Release No. 8 of the Secretary General of CASH dated 1st August 2006.

Sabah Wealth for the patriotic local people who dwell on it

During my signature campaign for a petition to the King

for the set up of Royal Commission of Inquiry in the Gaya Street,

some people also urge CASH to go into other pressing areas faced by the people.

It is timely that we deal with this very important wealth and resources matter faced by Sabah vis-a-vis Malaysia legally and otherwise.

Once the richest state in Malaysia, now we know where are in the wealth and resources status.

Unless we act now, we may not have the chance to regret later. Would there be ever another chance to undo what we had been gone through? Now we were told at the SAPP's Forum titled "New National Agenda"- the Way Forward, that Sabah can re-negotiate the 5% oil royalties according to Prof. Dr. Shad. (HE 1st August, 2006). How do we go about that?

We have to address the several major issues on our resources namely the rainforests, the land and the fossil oil.

Don't we have the basic rights to review how we as the natives and genuine citizens of Sabah had lost our resources now and forever?

The issues we should be concerned are how Yayasan Sabah manages our resources, how our land including native customery land has been manipulated by some quarters, and how Petronas has likely signed away our oil resource to foreigners in long term exploration deals?

Other related issues are identified and illustrated in my book titled "Sabah Wealth - image of wood power" earlier presented to Suhakam in March 2004 in the context of corruption and human rights.

Right now, we as consumers also feel the worst impact on the regular power blackout plus inadequate quality treated water throughout Sabah, possibly due to the mismanagement of our resources linked to massive corruption.

The crux of the oil issue is the impact on the increasing population when we only get a low 5% royalty when Sabah is lying at the bottom of the poverty scale in Malaysia. That percentage would appear to be inadequate and injustice when we do not even know the gross value of oil extracted from our wells according to Tan Sri Simon Sipaun at the NNA forum.

If we look elsewhere in Africa, where the oil rich area in the delta area of Niger, it is the poor people stuck to face the degradation due to the excessive exploitation of the fossil fuel when the wealth so generated go elsewhere.

Meanwhile, we hope the Suhakam would initiate a move including an inquiry over the handling of the wealth and resources of Sabah. We would like to hear from the authorities concerned and any other parties who may one way or another manage the Sabah resources for the last few decades.

Many of us have been part of the problem and we should be part of the effort to find a new direction to address our basic needs in Sabah. Would other NGOs here be interested to play an active part in this exercise?


Joshua Y. C. Kong

Secretary General of Consumers' Association of Sabah & Labuan FT. (CASH).

Secretary General of Patriotic Citizens Forum on Identity Cards

exploitation for the malaysia boleh spirit. or should i say, barisan national boleh's spirit.