Speech by Chiew Chiu Sing on 2008 Sarawak State Budget

Speech by Chiew Chin Sing, DAP Sarawak Deputy Chairman and Member of the Sarawak State Legislative Council for N59 Kidurong on the Debate of the Supply (2008) Bill 2007 and the Motion to refer the Estimates of Development Expenditure, 2008 on 22nd November, 2007 in the Sarawak State Legislative Council, Kuching, Sarawak.

Mr. Speaker,

As we look back at the first wave of development in the past decades, some of the more distinct marks or huge projects that come to my mind cannot be more than the petro chemical complex of MLNG plants, ABF plants, the Bakun Dam and the huge land development schemes of palm oil plantations and tree planting. Much of this had happened in the Bintulu Division.

All these projects do not come without a price and the people who pay the highest price are those people whose ancestral lands were being taken up for the development projects and were compensated so little for their lands. These people never got rich just because they had own valuable land.

If I remember correctly the land that the petro chemicals plants and the Parkcity shop housing project in Bintulu were actually sited on lands belonging to the great great grand parents of the Kampong folks of Bintulu and when their lands were acquired for the development projects they were paid very little for an acre of land.

The Bakun Hydroelectric Dam built in Belega when completed will flood an area the size of Singapore Island, much of the land are the NCR lands of the Orang Ulu comprising of the Kenyah, Kayan, Ukit, Punan and Lahanan, about 10,000 of them.

These people were compensated with only 3 acres of farm land apart from other compensations for resettlement in 15 longhouses at Sungai Asap. Soon they found out that the 3 acres of farm land are actually not suitable for framing because of the terrain or soil conditions. According to the longhouse folks the negotiated area was 3 hectares.

I have also heard that some compensation monies have not been given to those natives. Some natives even told me that the money had been lost. They have little formal education and they have no access to information. Where is their compensation money, can I ask?

Another problem was that the lots are not accessible because the roads that were promised have not been built. Although the rural folks had approached the authorities and been offered help to build the access roads, they were told that there is no fund.

The people have no choice now but to find new lands for farming because without them they would have no income and no livelihood and poverty would hit them in no time. The rural folks who were once rich, living off their lands, today are finding it hard to find or plant food. So what can they do except to plant on the land near the roadside. They have planted cocoa, pepper and oil palm occupying around 400 hectares.

But they had been told by the Land and Survey Department that this new land which they are farming on for a living belongs to a plantation lease that had been awarded to a joint-venture plantation company and the longhouse folks are illegally occupying the plantation company's land.

The Land and Survey Department has issued them with eviction notices and have marked out the farm houses and the crops to be demolished. The people are appealing to the government that the 400 hectares which they have farmed on be demarcated for the use of the longhouse people.

Mr. Speaker,

The story of conflict of land claims between the natives and plantation companies are not uncommon these days, it is happening all over in Sarawak and I hear them everyday in Bintulu. One of the most serious cases that involved bloodshed happened in Ulu Niah a few years ago.

Although the conflict between Rumah Banyang and Rumah Agam of mile 8 Bintulu/Miri road and the oil palm plantation company is not as deadly as that in Ulu Niah, the animosity and hatred between the company and the longhouse folks becomes more and more serious each day.

According to the folks of the longhouses and according to adat of the natives, the land at Mile 8 Bintulu/Miri road is their temuda land and that is why there are planting oil palm on the land. But the company is also planting oil palm along side those planted by the longhouse folks, claming that the have the lease on the land for plantation.

About two weeks ago on the 3rd of November, while the folks of the longhouse were working on their land, the company called in the police. More than 30 policemen armed with guns and ammo came in trucks, vans and motor vehicles and arrested 22 of the men and women who were working on their temuda lands. Why make life so hard for our rural people who are planting for a living of their temuda land? Doesn't the Government want them to lead a better life? Or is the Government allowing them to lead a life of poverty, so that they can be easily persuaded by money politics to vote for the Government in every election?

Why should the police come fully armed when in fact the longhouse folks were just working on their land with their bare hands or whether the company men had made false reports that the longhouse folks were attacking them and therefore the police have to come fully armed.

Mr. Speaker,

So much of the land along the Ulu Sebauh Road, near the Segan, Silas area had also been leased to plantation companies. Longhouses around these area had been well known for years for planting pineapples and now with the coming of the oil palm plantation company the pineapple farms will have to go and according to the longhouse folks those hundreds of hectares of pineapple farm will be bulldozed to the ground.

So what is there for the longhouse folks who had relied all these while on the pineapple farming as living. Should they lose their livelihood to the plantation company?

The longhouse folks cannot see how it could be so hard for the government to exclude their pineapple farm lands from the plantation company so that the longhouse people too can find a living from planting pineapple. The government should not push the responsibility to the company, saying that the land had been leased to the company. In fact the government should establish policies and guidelines to ensure win-win situations for both the rural folks and the company.

If development projects is causing so much hardships among our people where our rural people is denied of land for farming for a livelihood then something must be very wrong with the development concept and policies of the first wave of development. If development projects are benefiting everybody, people would have no time for conflict but only productivity.

All over Sarawak the rural folks are crying out, let the oil palm company plant all they want to plant but let us also have land to plant for our livelihood, and I think if the rural people themselves who want to become productive on their farm lands let us then give them a chance to do so.

Honestly, for all the development projects that had been implemented I do not know how many of our rural or local people have become rich or become millionaire. In fact are we creating more poverty for our rural folks in the process of development. By giving more land to the plantation companies at the expense of the longhouse folks, the Government is practicing divide and rule. It is not responsible and unhealthy.

Our society bears the social costs, cost of having so many foreign legal and illegal workers and other social ills, while those in power and the rich get more powerful and richer.

Adam Smith in `The Wealth of Nations' understood men to be units of independent judgment, capable of making decisions upon the basis of freely available information, the collective result being the wisest possible allocations of wealth and if we in Sarawak deny our native folks of that then we have deprived them of the opportunity to become wealthy.

In the book `The Assault on Reasons' by Al Gore, the former US Vice President, he said that Capitalism and democracy shared the same internal logic: Free markets and representative democracy were both assumed to operate best when individuals made rational decisions; and both shared a common enemy: despotic rulers capable of using arbitrary power to confiscate property and restrict liberty.

He also said that the inner structure of liberty is a double helix: One strand-political freedom-spirals upward in tandem with the other strand-economic freedom. But the two strands, though intertwined, must remain separate in order for the structure of freedom to maintain its integrity. If political and economic freedoms have been siblings in the history of liberty, it is the incestuous coupling of wealth and power that poses the deadliest threat to democracy. If wealth can be easily exchanged for power, then the concentration of either can double the corrupting potential of both. Freedom's helix then spirals downward toward unhealthy combinations of concentrated political and economic power.

That is what has happened throughout human history. Over and over again, wealth and power have become concentrated in the hands of a few who consolidate and perpetuate their control at the expense of the many. This default pattern has appeared in many variations and has been interrupted by rare and memorable exceptions, including ancient Athens and the brief Roman Republic.

History has its worries about the danger of concentrated wealth. The roman historian Plutarch, had warned that an `imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all Republics.'

The founder of capitalism, Adam Smith, wrote in `The Wealth of Nations' about the wealthy and powerful corrupt elites throughout the history of the world prior to the dawn of the new age:' All for ourselves and nothing for other people seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.'

And of course, the apostle Paul wrote in his letter to Timothy: `The love of money is the root of all evil.'

Mr. Speaker,

So much had been said of the Regional Corridor of Development in the central region of Sarawak and the second wave of development in the past year. Many are wondering whether the fruits of the second wave of development will be like that of the first wave of development. Where so much is said of the fruit trees that are being planted but the fruits are really not satisfying and in some cases even worst especially for the rural folks.

It is urged that many of the shortcoming of the first wave of development will be rectified and that mistakes would be learnt so that more wealth can be created among our people.

But from I read about the second wave of development and the proposed aluminium smelting plant in Similajau Bintulu, I am deeply concerned about the environment impact it will have on our environment and the health of our people. I have talked about the aluminium smelting plant at length during the November 2002 Dun sitting and I will not go into it here again.

As it is today the air quality in Bintulu is already very bad. The air pollution from the open furnaces burning at the Kemena Industrial Estate at night especially, and perks of ammonia smell from the ABF plant at the Kidurong and Tg. Batu area, Bintulu is having the highest case of upper respiratory illness in the whole country. So what had the environment people done about this. Our environment department people must be transparent and let us know the daily air quality level in Bintulu, so that we can know what is going on, otherwise the people would be kept in the dark while inhaling daily the unhealthy Bintulu air.

Therefore, I cannot understand how a plant like the aluminum smelter could be sited in the middle of the length of our state at Similajau. We live on an island and if the plant is sited at a corner of the island facing three side of the ocean I am sure much of the pollution would then be blown into the ocean sky. Of course, if we were living in a continent where we have vast land then building the plant inland would be a different matter.

The Bakun hydroelectric dam when operational is going to supply us with much cheap energy that in fact would be a plus factor for us to attract many types of industries apart from the aluminum smelter. Shouldn't we have more choices and other alternatives beside the aluminum smelter that will bring us the equivalent or better economic returns and social goods. I hope that the government will be careful and prudent in making the decision, and what is decided must reflect the public concern, because it is too important a decision as the result will have serious impact and consequences on the environment and lives of the people in the central Sarawak region for generations and generations to come.

Mr. Speaker,

This is not a political issue. This is a moral issue. It is about lives of the people in Bintulu. It is not a question of Left verses Right; it is a question of right verses wrong. Put simply, it is wrong to build a plant that will ruin the prospects of every generation that follows ours.

I have heard and I have said it before, that aluminium smelter plants are not even encouraged by those countries that have been attracted to invest in our land. So, why should these deadly pollutants be allowed in our skies when those developed countries don't want it?

I pray that the government of the day will rise to meet the challenge to abandon the project and by rising to meet the challenge we will find the vision and moral authority to see that this is not a political problem but as moral imperatives. It is therefore an opportunity for bipartisanship and transcendence, an opportunity find our better selves and create a brighter future for Bintulu and Sarawak.

In our second wave of development we must be vigilant in protecting our environment, our government must never abandon its responsibility to protect the environment to make our place healthy to live in. That is why it is time that we should be looking for alternative industries that are not only environmentally sound but also economically viable and enhancing to our social agenda in Sarawak.

So far on the second wave of development the government has one conversation and the public another conversation. There need to be vigorous interactivity between the government and the public so that decisions made are tested, studied, reviewed and examined through the processes of government that are designed to improve policy. And the knowledge that they will be reviewed prevents overreaching and checks the accretion of power. By the same token, whenever power is unchecked and unaccountable, it almost inevitably leads to mistakes and abuses. In the absence of rigorous accountability, incompetence flourishes. Dishonesty is encouraged and rewarded.

We want to make sure that the second wave of development is really a development that is for the people and by the people where the people can vigorously participate in the whole process so as to make sure that at the end of the day our people will be richer and our nation stronger.

Mr. Speaker,

During the last DUN sitting I had brought up the predicament of the squatters folks at Km 2 Jalan Bintulu/Miri. There were originally 82 families. Today 61 families had moved.

They moved not that because they could afford but because they are afraid that, if they were forced to move by the authority, all their building materials would be destroyed. The house post would be chopped down, plywood wall torn apart and the zinc roofing sheets punched with chain saw teeth all then would not be usable. The brutality is most inhumane.

Of the 21 who are still staying there, they are really helpless. The Human Rights Commission of Malaysia, (SUHAKAM) visited them on the 22nd of August 2007 and after interviewing the squatters, they held a dialogue with the Bintulu development authority, Department of Land and Survey and also the legal representative of the land owner.

After extensive discussion the land owner agreed to allow the squatters folks to stay for another six months, and now time is running out fast.

SUHAKAM also make 2 recommendations to alleviate the problems faced by the squatters at KM 2 Jalan Bintulu/Miri:

1. that the local authorities, namely BDA and Resident's office should look for temporary solution, in this instance to provide interim accommodation so as not to interrupt the livelihood of the squatters and

2. that in the long term, the local authorities, namely BDA and Resident's office should work with social agencies to make available alternative accommodation to squatters in Bintulu through resettlement and the rumah rakyat schemes.

Mr. Speaker,

SUHAKAM is right and it is a basic responsibility of a government to provide shelter for our people. And as the time for them to move draws nearer and nearer, would the Honorable Minister let this August House know what had the Ministry done in providing an interim accommodation for them as being recommended by SUHAKAM. Or as being proposed by the squatter folks themselves in a letter addressed to BDA on 20th October, 2007 to allow them to buy the so many empty house lots in Sg. Plan, Tg. Kidurong resettlement scheme. They can pay an installment of no more than RM180 a month. Or allow them to buy low cost houses and pay an installment of no more than RM 280 a month.

Many low cost houses, low cost flats and even resettlement lots had been provided for in Bintulu because the squatters problem is serious in Bintulu but how many of those who are staying in the squatter area had applied for the houses and land lots but cannot get them while many of those who are not staying in the squatter area can get them. Why is this so? As for the resettlement lots, the lots had been built and sold out for many years already but out of the so many lots no more than ten houses had been built so far.

Mr. Speaker,

The policlinic in Bintulu town is getting more and more congested and it is high time that better facilities be provided for to help the sick folks who had come to seek for treatment.

Each day the place is jammed packed and often it took 2 to 3 hours of waiting for the patient just to meet the doctors. The place is just a misery, it is not only too small but the ceiling is low also, taking the form of the single story old type clinic standing on stilts. We can imagine how the ventilation can be with the air hardly moving, making the sick even more uncomfortable.

I sympathize with the doctors and nurses working there. There is just not enough of them around to look after the sick who had come. I say that it is high time that a proper policlinic be built immediately in the Bintulu Town area and be staffed with enough doctors and nurses so that our people can be provided with decent medical service. Our people deserve better.

Then there is the policlinic in Kidurong also catering for maternity service. It is sited at a corner lot of the kidurong low cost housing, a single story building.

Many years ago there was just one low cost housing area in Kidurong but to day the number of low cost housing had quadrupled but the clinic is still the same old single story low cost house with the same staffs around. The facilities and staffs are not enough and I urge that the medical department to look into this matter seriously and upgrade the policlinic medical service in the Kidurong area.

Mr. Speaker,

Since the last time I brought up the concerns of the women of Sarawak in this august house in the December 2005 sitting, about the girls from China coming here in the guise of so many forms and types of businesses and others- but are actually here to become the sleeping dolls of married men. The situation had not improved but is getting worse, there must be thousands of them in each of our major towns, going around as mobile hawkers, or involved in selling health products or providing so called health services in shophouses or operating from the housing estates under contract.

Mr. Speaker,

Who are harbouring these people? These women are not necessarily from China. There are so many of them from Thailand, Indonesia etc. How could the authority concerned not know? How could they ever enter Sarawak in the first place? How could they work in Sarawak under social visit pass?

Many concerned women had called me and told me about their husbands have abandoned them and their children for the young girls from foreign countries. They are upset, very sad, frustrated and felt down right cheated. They cried and they do not know what else to do, really feeling helpless indeed. Their children are suffering too. Their innocent souls see but do not understanding the pains of the mother or understand the fights and quarrels between their parents or why pa-pa is never home at night.

Mr. Speaker, this is not right. We should not allow our women and the innocent children to go through such unnecessary, man made trauma, we should not allow our families to be broken up because of these people coming from outside who are here to make money and so many of our man had fallen into the trap.

This is a serious matter as it is a threat to our family institutions and the very values of the matrimony which in itself is holy. If this is allowed to go on it will break down the family units and then we would be deemed to have lost our direction in our social agenda in building a caring, loving, responsible, healthy and happy society.

Today our society is riddled with so many problems of the young people. One of the main reasons is because of the breaking down of the values of the family unit. The problem is incurring great deficits for our society. The social cost is high and we are paying for it not only in cash but more, we are paying it with our future. We must put a stop to it immediately.

Do we care? We better. I challenge you to care, before we fall deeper.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker for your indulgence.