Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Afraid Jabu Repeats Same Old Lie About "Development"

Jabu lambasted ‘certain quarters’ for denying Sarawak's great development

From Bintulu.Org

Posted: Nov 24, 2008 11:10am

Comments by Sarawak Headhunter in red.

Sarawak Deputy Chief Minister Alfred Jabu Numpang lambasted ‘certain quarters’ who he said kept denying the great changes and developments that Sarawak experienced in the 45 years of independence.

WHAT "great changes and developments"? Obviously a man in great denial. Are Sarawakians expected to be grateful for the crumbs of "development" which the BN Government have thrown to Sarawak while the real fruits of development has been enjoyed by Malaya and siphoned off by BN politicians and their cronies? This idiot deserves to be lambasted himself.

Speaking at a luncheon reception of St Mark Chapel, Nanga Peka, Paku, Jabu described them as individuals or small groups of people who were always in denial.

Who's in denial again?

“They were only trying to influence the people to oppose development for their own personal gain,” Jabu reported to have said by Borneo Post.

Who in their right mind would want to oppose real development? IT'S THE CRUMBS OF DEVELOPMENT THAT WE OBJECT TO BEING FORCED TO SWALLOW, JABU!

Jabu who is the Minister of Infrastructure Development and Communication as well as Minister of Rural Development warned the people against falling prey to such detractors.

Unfortunately the people have fallen prey to Taib, Jabu and the rest of the BN gang of crooks, who have deprived them of any chance of real development and will continue to do so as long as they are still in power.

The Deputy Chief Minister said these people are only good at making empty promises but added he was confident that people would not be easily swayed by them to ensure that they would remain progressive.

Empty promises? That is the BN's specialty. Who else has all the opportunities?

However not everyone is agreeable with the Sarawak Deputy Minister's statement. Jabu is in fact often at loggerheads with many young Dayak intellectuals and bloggers for his off-the-cuff remarks.

These are not just "off-the cuff" remarks, but the utterings of a seriously damaged brain.

Henry anak Joseph a Dayak blogger recently said “It has greatly surprised me that a man of his standing is prepared to stoop so low to find fault with the young Dayak intellectuals. In my humble opinion his precious time should be devoted to matters that can provide long term benefits to the Dayak,”.

Which are of no concern to him.

In another function earlier on Jabu announced RM50 million dividends will be paid to Salcra scheme participants in January and July 2009.

Sounds a lot? Divide it by the number of Salcra scheme participants and see exactly how much they each get - peanuts.

Only in Sarawak has mediocrity been elevated to a standard of excellence.

When will Sarawakians wake up to the same old lies which Taib, Jabu and the BN keep repeating?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

"In another function earlier on Jabu announced RM50 million dividends will be paid to Salcra scheme participants in January and July 2009.Sounds a lot? Divide it by the number of Salcra scheme participants and see exactly how much they each get - peanuts."

Around approx RM200-250 per month. Or RM1 per acre of NCR lands. That is the return when palm oil price RM4000/tonne. Even worst now palm oil with RM1500/tonne better let it rot. Ah J*bu and Salcra, Such A Low, Crappy Returns Annually!

Anonymous said...

PKR Youth unhappy about being sidelined
By Adib Zalkapli
SHAH ALAM, Nov 28 - A sense disappointment at being left out from the party's mainstream politics dominated the debate at the PKR Youth annual congress here today, as most delegates avoided discussing the party's failure to topple the federal government on Sept 16.

There was also little talk of the party's failure to win the support of rural Malays. The closest the congress came to the issue was when a Johor PKR leader suggested to the central leadership to get celebrities to join the party.

"You know that Mawi used to put up party posters like us," said Zabidie Abas from the party's Kulai division on the Malay singer's political activities before he became famous.

Delegates chose to focus instead on complaining about very few of its members had been appointed to government positions in states held by the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) alliance.

A Selangor delegate complained of the low representation of the wing's members in the state local councils.

"Out of 200 councillors, only seven are from the PKR Youth, although the younger generation forms 44 per cent of the state population," Mazli Saring told reporters.
Azrizal Tahir from Penang expressed his disappointment with elected party leaders whom he said had been neglecting their constituencies.

"I warn all leaders who fail to perform as state assemblymen and MPs. If they fail let us reject them," said Azrizal.

He added that some party lawmakers only visit their constituencies on weekends to attend kenduri, leaving them with no time to attend to people's problems.

"Some, not all delegates, in their debate, did not focus on the major issues. Certain aspects of the policy address were misinterpreted as a message that the PKR Youth members are being left out in government administration," said the wing's strategist Yusmadi Yusoff, when commenting on the tone of the debate.

On the complain that some PKR lawmakers have neglected their constituencies, Yusmadi said it shows the failure to understand the spirit of teamwork.

"It shows politics is still based on individuals not the system. The focus now should be on how PKR members and leaders can work as a team, it should not be about which leader performs better as an individual," he told The Malaysian Insider.

For PKR Youth secretary Zulfikar Ali, the issues were raised as PKR MPs and assemblymen are still adapting to their new role.

"They must know how to balance between the people's wishes and the organization's expectation," said Zulfikar.

"It's the same with the complain that party activists are left out from getting government contracts. Some of them have been sidelined since Reformasi, and now that we have won what's wrong with giving them contracts as long as they are qualified they are awarded in a transparent manner," he added.

Anonymous said...

well, just see around and see whatever development projects which are around and compared with what we had back in the 60s or 70s.

Anonymous said...

THE development of SCORE (Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy), both intensive and intrusive, will represent the last phase of a major development for Sarawak to push the state to a much higher level of development beyond the year 2020.

It will exploit the most important economic potentials, available in the central region, to push the state to the era of massive industrialisation to enable it to become an industrialised society on par with those in developed countries towards the year 2030.

Nevertheless, the development dictates a kind of politics where the government and the opposition should agree to speak on the same wavelength, at least on major issues, with the primary objective to involve the people in the process of the massive development of the region.

Hence, it is important for all elected representatives of the people to be bold enough to understand what will evolve in the next 20 years of economic planning toward 2020 and beyond. The state government, with the support of the federal government, has a perspective of the things that will be carried out during the period.

All the planning, the fundamental ones in particular, will move towards realising the objectives of Vision 2020.

However, the state cannot become part of a developed nation unless the people have the capacity to participate in the big transformation of economic management which entails transfer of technology in carrying out the task from the most difficult one, which is the development of Mukah as a Smart City, to that of providing better amenities to the people.

The following are excerpts from a keynote speech of Chief Minister Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud at a parliamentary discourse in Kuching on Oct 13:

I have been watching the political development in the country for the last one year, after the March general elections in particular, and seeing populist ideas surfacing very strongly.

In fact, they are becoming the most important features of the challenge being mounted by the opposition to score political points against the government. Before this, during the last 20 or 30 years, populist politics had never played a role in Malaysian politics for the simple reason that the people had been focusing on the development of the country.

Obviously, the populist politicians have been trying to exploit some of the social problems which have been overlooked or have not been tackled by the government in the common efforts to bring into proper perspective the socio-economic development in the state and country.

Immediately after Merdeka, the spirit of independence was sufficient to get the people to be more patient in waiting to enjoy the fruits of development.

However, because of rising expectations and exposures to things happening around the world, the people have become increasingly impatient with things being done for them, the state and the country.

In fact, the second Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tun Abdul Razak, took the opportunity to frame a political consensus whereby even the opposition should share with the government a certain political attitude — that is to minimise politics and give greater attention to the efforts of national development.

Of course, I share his view because what is the use of freedom and independence if the people are still struggling in poverty; they will not have enough dignity to enjoy their political freedom.

Development as rallying point in politics

Generally, the people are receptive to the idea that we should put development on a higher pedestal and make it the rallying point of politics. Of course, now we are a bit more prosperous and able to relax a bit more like in any prosperous society.

Regrettably, the opposition sees the latitude as opportunities to change the political climate of the country. But that does not make it any less important for us to ensure that the process of development must be continued, preferably at an accelerated pace, towards realising the objectives of Vision 2020.

Therefore, we must develop a new attitude that can justify our role in the service of the people, state and country … that we still care for them and that we want to develop a civil society where freedom, human rights, ecological protection and other socio-economic questions ought to be given greater emphasis.

We are more committed to continue with the process of development that can meet the rising expectations of the people. This is the thing about developing the state and the country.

England had a struggle of 530 years to build its democracy. In the process, the country witnessed a rebellion by the people who even beheaded their King, experimented with a republic under Cromwell and restored a monarchy again — even at one stage had a queen without husband — to make one full circle of the experiment with democracy.

The experiences gave England a lot of time to evolve a political system which makes Parliament supreme with the people playing critical roles in balancing the big question of authority and freedom. The power of people, in fact, delivers benefits to society.

We are preparing ourselves for the industrial revolution which should serve as an example to the world that we have the capability to develop our economy.

We did not have over 200 or 300 years to develop our political system, yet are expected to develop within the short period of our independence (51 years for Peninsular Malaysia and 45 years for Sarawak) to deliver everything vis-à-vis economic prosperity, unity of the people, stability of the government and the proper concept of safeguarding democracy and developing civil society.

In other words, we have the task of looking after everything in the service of the people, state and country during a short period of time. This is a huge challenge for a developing country like ours.

However, whatever looks rather difficult now can be considered relatively easy compared to the difficult period we have gone through.

We successfully thwarted attempts by the communists to take over our society by playing a bit of populist politics after we had just gained our independence. For all the complexities, the government and the opposition must recognise their respective roles — that the government must deliver on its pledges and promises to the people and the opposition to give its views, comments and recommendations in a more constructive manner. The criticisms must be consistent with the evolution of democracy.

However, when it comes to a situation of very limited resources, the government has to talk in terms of delivering the goods and services according to priorities.

In contrast, the opposition tends to say all sorts of things to such an extent that even if the government has done a certain thing, the opposition will say it is not enough.

Again, this is a challenge of building democracy and civil society in a developing country.

We are still facing a challenge, even in a reasonably easier climate, to get the consensus among the people to give us enough freedom to push the country to greater economic development.

Regrettably, the opposition has been trying to bring the government into a greater debate which we must face with greater confidence in producing elaborate answers.

Arguably, parliamentary discourse is useful in the sense that it gives us the advantage to justify why we do certain things with higher priority or why we have done certain things which have fallen short of the expectations of the people.

Generally, the roles of the government and the people are still unequal in strength at the moment. Politically, they are strong but a bit weak in the development scenario; their participation in the process of development has to be strengthened.

For example, we still need to build up the capacity of the private sector in development to hasten its pace; we are still relying heavily on the government’s machinery for the purpose.

Nevertheless, the opposition assumes the ideology that the government has the capacity and sufficient money but has been putting the resources in wrong places and wrong times. It is the opposition’s way of challenging the position of the government.

Equality in distribution of resources

Incidentally, there is a debate being instigated by the opposition that is going on that Sarawak and Sabah, as oil producing states, should get more royalty.

Needless to say the issues have appeal in the local political scene. But the people involved in the debate dare not say it in greater details or spell out the implications to states like Perak, Kedah, Perlis and Kelantan, which do not have oil.

They know that the net results of allocating resources, which is the responsibility of the Federal government, is to help poorer states much more than the consideration of the origin of the resources.

It is the only way to ensure equality in the distribution the nation’s resources among the states otherwise, there will be inequality in the distribution of wealth in the country.

Professor Geoff (Geoffrey Gallop, head of Graduates’ School of Government, Sydney, Australia) knows for a long time Western Australia has always been advocating cessation unless the Federal government gives enough allocation for its development.

These are some the challenges we have to face; we must learn to develop answers to justify our actions. If we cannot develop them, we will lose the debate even though we have the potentials to win it in the performances of our duties.

The opposition can impress the people very well. In other words, we must decide our priorities in development in view of limited resources. Perhaps, it could help justify our actions to the people.

And this brings me to the topic ‘Scenario planning and change management’ which I have been asked to talk about at this discourse.

Basically, ‘Scenario planning’ is not as artistic or difficult as people tend to think. It is the product of trying to study the political topography and economic potentials of a country with a view to charting a development strategy to move forward.

In our case, we must decide on the kind of development best suited to the people and country, and manage the change taking place as a consequence to the development in an efficient manner. It may sound simple but implementing it can be a harrowing experience.

The development in Sarawak, right from the very beginning, could be done following the Red Book system, the brainchild of the late Tun Abdul Razak, the second Prime Minister of Malaysia.

After all, the formula had brought tremendous progress to the Federation of Malaya, which impressed the people of Sarawak when we faced the Cobbold Commission, tasked to ascertain our wishes on the proposed formation of Malaysia in the early 60s.

Then, it was the majority view of the people that the Federal government should get deeply involved in the development of Sarawak.

Undeniably, the Red Book system was a good strategy for development but it could not work well in Sarawak because of the state’s sheer size and different settings.

For example, boundaries of divisions and districts in Sarawak cannot serve as the basis for good regional or area planning. We can have a beautiful map that charts boundaries of divisions and districts but it cannot serve as the basis of a development plan for a certain district due to the irregular size of the proposed areas.

As a consequence, an uneven development will arise, partly due to infrastructure not being developed in equal measures in all districts. It will also render the supervision of development less effective.

Development planning based on local environment

When I came back to the state more than 20 years ago, I decided, with my understanding of the principle of the Red Book System and the local situation and environment, to revise the overall plan for the development of Sarawak.

It took me about three months of deep meditation to come up with a new formula in the form of the politics of development, a comprehensive development programme which encompasses politics, economy, demography, culture and other social norms and values.

The programme took cognizance of the fact that the inter-relationship between a stable government and successful economic development is very obvious.

Essentially, the state’s socio-economic development has to go through a reform in trying to foster what is called, a multi-racial structure. Of course, I am very happy the people have been able to embrace the reform.

Thus, we have very good race relationship between Chinese, Malays, Melanau, Ibans, Bidayuhs, Orang Ulu and others. In fact, the greatest treasure we have is our ability to co-operate among ourselves in the common pursuit of greater progress and advancement through the process of development.

Hence, we have been able to have dialogues and agreements on certain fundamentals in the service of the people, state and country.

The new plan must emphasise an integrated approach in development which, among other things, should be able to create critical masses or new areas of growth — which will take a long time to develop — in rural areas.

The development of a critical mass is an integrated approach to focus efforts on the development of resources available in order to add value to them as much as possible.

Such development should be able to create more spin-off effects to the overall economic development of the area.

Admittedly, it is easier said than done as conscientious efforts have to be made to get the people involved in the process of development to enable them to benefit from it at the local level.

Henceforth, the development of infrastructure must no longer be geared towards fulfilling the ambition of linking Lundu all the way to Lawas only.

Instead, it must relate to development even if means constructing a road to certain area without necessarily linking it to other areas which can still be linked by river or sea transportation.

It took 15 years to develop a critical mass before it could begin to produce some results for the people.

Understandably, infrastructure development remains the hardest form of development to be carried out in the state mainly due to its huge land surface and small population, comprising people living in small villages or longhouses over a wide area.

The distribution of population is uneven. A lot of kampungs and longhouses — in fact 60 per cent of them — have fewer than 50 families each. The demographic patterns pose huge problems in providing uniformed economic development for the people.

Therefore, conscientious efforts must be made to encourage the people to respond positively to changes and give them hope that economic development, in which they should participate, will create opportunities for them to earn better incomes and lift their standards of living.

Undeniably, the development of rural areas has also been able to create opportunities for the people in urban areas who have the capital and skills to make extra incomes.

On the other hand, the rural people with enough education should pick up skills of handling small businesses as a way to get involved in the business sector of the economy.

Such an inter-change of urban-rural opportunities and skills has altered the demography of Sarawak a great deal.

During, the last 15 years, Kuching has more than doubled its population, in fact almost tripling it. The emergence of the new market area is a good example of how the country can benefit from development based on the economy of scale.

The development of Miri, during the last 15 years, has also doubled its size while Bintulu has progressively become the example of the positive impact of increases in population.

Unfortunately, Sibu has been losing population. There was nothing I could do to stop the outflow of the population.

The reason is simple. The development of the central region of Sarawak costs colossal sums of money. It was made worse by migration of the population. At initial stage, the region with the hilly and mountainous hinterlands and soggy and very soft soil in coastal areas, needs a vast sum of money to develop its infrastructure.

Besides, it is being criss-crossed by numerous big and small rivers, including the mighty Rajang and Baram Rivers. Hence, a vast sum of money for development can only be justified if the region has enough potential for development.

Fair distribution of incomes

A search for new sources of income reveals the central region has enormous coal reserves in Balingian and Ng Merit and huge hydro potentials in the hinterlands of Kapit and Ulu Baram which can justify massive investments for the region’s overall development.

The state needs about RM300 billion for the purpose which will be stretched towards 2030. Basically, the plan will entail the development of hydro dams in Bakun (due for completion in 2010), Murum, Baleh, Ulu Baram and Ulu Limbang during the period.

Besides, it will also involve the construction more coal-fired power stations to generate sufficient electricity for the development of industrial plants and the setting up of factories in the region, initially in the Simalajau-Bintulu-Mukah belt.

Assuredly, the development of the industrial plants and the setting up of factories will be in conformity with the high standards spelt out in the policies, enforced over the year, for environmental protection.

Thus, the birth of SCORE or Sarawak Corridor of Renewable Energy which embraces about a third of the area of Sarawak as a form of massive and integrated development of the central region of Sarawak.

The SCORE development area has to be extended — which was not a critical factor in its planning — as it must include areas where there are hydro potentials and enormous coal reserves.

Besides, we should never expect the people in the area — who would be putting their hearts into the development of hydro projects only to see them benefiting other people — to be happy with such development. Surely, they will fight against it.

We must ensure the projects will have some spin-off effects to the surrounding areas. In other words, it has become very important for us to ensure the hydro projects’ ability to give people in surrounding areas a sense of fair distribution of incomes.

It must also be understood the state government has already developed large tracts for palm oil estates before the launching of SCORE.

Therefore, the development of the large area, being incorporated into SCORE, is not really a burden because other peripheral development has already been undertaken in it.

Basically, SCORE is being considered on the availability of roughly about 20,000 megawatts of hydro power potentials and up to 8,000 megawatts of coal-fired electricity.

The development of the energy potentials primarily to generate reasonably cheap electricity which will comprise a fair mix of energy to be generated from hydro power and coal-fired power generating stations, should be able to give the state the ability to attract projects that consume a lot of energy.

In other words, we will be in the position to attract people like manufacturers of aluminum and nickel smelters, either manufacturers of iron or steel, manufacturers of glass and others.

Actually, these are trigger projects that make SCORE almost immediately attractive to investors.

During the launching of SCORE, the state government secured commitments of more than RM100 billion. But concentrating only on the development of energy will be insufficient without developing the economy of the rural sector.

When we develop an industry and not the people, we create social problems because the people have not been able to change as fast as we want them.

For example, while our school-going population will be able to respond to new job opportunities in future, there are people, above 35 today, who will not be able to respond to calls for better jobs. Therefore, agriculture must be developed side by side within the SCORE area.

Deep sea fishing, aquaculture as attractive ventures

The development of agriculture, even on a commercial basis, does not frighten us anymore.

The state government, with the support of the federal government, has already spent a huge sum on the development of infrastructure in the Rajang delta which is no longer considered uneconomic for the development of agriculture.

Besides, the fishing industry, which will focus on deep sea fishing, has the potential to land RM2 billion worth of fish a year at Tanjung Manis port.

Aquaculture has also become quite an attractive industry. It will be developed using the technology from countries like Taiwan and investments from countries in the Middle East.

The state government is developing a fishery complex, costing over RM1.5 billion, in Tanjung Manis as part of the overall plan to develop Tanjung Manis as an industrial port city within SCORE.

Obviously, SCORE has become increasingly attractive to justify spending big sums of between RM6 billion to RM9 billion to develop the infrastructure … from construction of roads, new ports, airports and the other components of the communication network in the region.

Assuredly, the state government will continue to make conscientious efforts — through intensive training programmes — to improve efficiency and transparency in the administrative machinery primarily to ensure efficiency in the delivery system.

Besides, companies like Rio Tinto or Bill Rotten or anybody else have already indicated they will come up with their own packages of management.

Our good relationship with big industrialists should be able to benefit the people, state and country.

For example, it will enhance our ability to adopt more sophisticated management programmes being developed with Shell and Petronas. It will be easier for us if we can continue to have good private investments coming in for the development of human capital.

We believe we have been quite well-equipped to intensify the development of the agriculture sector, which is getting easier, as part of the overall programme to broaden the economic base of the state.

We propose to blend in more and more with modern technology, modern management and land development in the development of the agriculture sector towards 2020 and beyond.

Generally, the country has relative advantage in land development with peninsular Malaysia having the experience in it for a long time; the state has been picking up very fast within the last 20 years.

Now we have local people developing plantations even on soft soil along the coast. Initially, they were reluctant because it costs 30 per cent more to develop palm oil estates on peat soil.

Later, they found out the yields would also be 30 per cent more. So after one cycle of planting, they get better returns from their plantations; they don’t have to spend more money for the second and subsequent rounds of harvesting.

The relationship between the private sector and RECODA will be developed on a more professional basis as we move forward.

The government’s role will be to tackle the socio-economic aspects of development. For example, though it will not do the actual management of investment, it will help to precipitate easier entry of investors into the state.

Understandably, the task may involve complex negotiations as international investors are very seasoned people in their game but we must try our best to be helpful to them.

We must tell them how much we can give way and if we cannot agree to their terms, we have to tell them why.

These are different ball games from those I used to undertake when I was the Minister for Primary Industries at the federal level in the 70s; they are more difficult than that.

Last phase of major development

The change in SCORE should be more manageable as it will be done partly by the machinery very similar to that for the planning and supervision of the agricultural and food industries and probably also tourism.

It will be carried out by the government more and more through the relationship with the private sector.

The development of SCORE which will be both intensive and intrusive, will represent the last phase of a major development for Sarawak in order to push it to a much higher level of development beyond the year 2020.

It will exploit the most important economic potentials, available in the central region, to push the state to the era of massive industrialisation to enable it to become an industrialised society on par with those in developed counties towards 2030.

After that, the state, with its rich biodiversity resources, can start developing the biotech industry which will take a longer time but is the most rewarding one to do.

The industry can be developed efficiently once the state can produce sufficient brainpower, particularly on research, for the purpose.

The research, particularly on life science, now being focused on agriculture and environmental protection, must be extended to the area of biotechnology in a more sophisticated manner in the future.

That may be given the main focus after 2030 although it should start now in a modest way.

The State must attract another 2/3 of the RM313 billion worth of investments for the development of SCORE to ensure its success.

The development of SCORE, among other things, will generate enormous employment opportunities for the people towards 2030. It is projected to create 1.5 million jobs.

About 30,000 will be managerial and professional jobs while 70,000 will be engineering and technical jobs and 140,000 skilled labourers. The rest will be for semi-skilled and unskilled labourers.

With our emphasis on human resource development, the local people should be able to get jobs in the upper level of the employment structure and very few in the lower level.

Therefore, we may take in more unskilled labourers — there are now about 100,000 working in estates and plantations doing jobs the local people have rejected — to work in SCORE.

We must plan ahead and bring them in smoothly. However, our ultimate objective is to make gradual transformation in our employment structure with greater application of machinery, usage of computers and adaptation to modern technology towards 2030.

During the last few years, the state had jumped from having no university to the establishment of two universities and three powerful campus universities.

Thank God, we have friends to develop institutions for higher learning in the state. Australia has been proven a good friend in this respect.

Besides, we can see Curtin and Swinburne doing very well and presumably should be able to break even soon. I have been given to understand Curtin could break even in a couple of years while Swinburne probably a year or two later; they are both in a very healthy position.

S’wak needs to train more people for technical jobs

Understandably, technical jobs will keep increasing as we move deeper into industrial development. It will require more technical and semi-skilled workers from the local population; that will be the hardest job to do towards 2030.

For this reason, we have been making necessary preparations like setting up more skills development centres and colleges in the next 10 to 15 years.

The development of facilities for higher education, which started five years ago, will continue to adhere strictly to the overall objective of providing quality education to the people.

We should be able to achieve the objective of training 500,000 to 600,000 people to become skilled and semi-skilled workers up the year 2030.

The management of the education — though the hardest part of the job to bring about balanced development to the state — must be carried out with great care right from the beginning to ensure we will not sacrifice quality for quantity. This must not be allowed to happen.

The net result of our educational development must be to produce sufficient numbers of people with the ability to do the works entrusted to them. No amount of certificates can replace knowledge and skills in education.

In this regard, members of the government and those in the opposition should develop some kind of consensus in their political debates and how to achieve some kind of critical plan for the development of human capital without resorting to too much political debates.

We must avoid too much politicking as it can push the country into another round of political turmoil at the expense of the people and not politicians, and undermine our overall efforts to push the development of the state towards 2020 and beyond.

I must say here all MPs and ADUNs must be bold enough to understand what will evolve in the next 20 years of economic planning towards 2020 and beyond.

We have a perspective of the things that we want to do and we must be ready to defend them.

All basic planning, the fundamental ones in particular, must move towards realising the objectives of Vision 2020.

Therefore, we must know the scenario we have charted to achieve the status of a developed nation by 2020 — in the case of Sarawak, beyond 2020 which I am sure we will be able to achieve.

Transformation of economic management

Nevertheless, we cannot become a developed nation unless the people have the capacity to participate in the big transformation of economic management which entails transfer of technology in carrying out our tasks from the most difficult one, which is the development of Mukah as a Smart City, to that of providing better quality of amenities to the people.

Perhaps, we should also ask ourselves when the rapid transit (RT) system could be implemented in Sarawak — from the point of view of economics — in cities like Kuching, Miri and Sibu? Our population may not come up fast enough but we will have a new economic impetus, new sources of income that may necessitate the system to be developed earlier in the state.

Essentially, all MPs and ADUNs must understand the development of SCORE dictates a kind of politics where the government and the opposition should agree to speak on the same wave length, at least on major issues, with the primary objective to involve the people in the process of the massive development of the region.

In this respect, the government backbenchers, comprising senators, members of parliament and Dewan Undangan Negeri members, must be ready to meet them as a way to exchange views and ideas which could be developed along healthy lines.

In other words, parliamentary discourse could become an invitation to the people in the process of development transformation towards 2020 and beyond.
Click here to Bookmark!

Anonymous said...

Lately Irrelevant Jabu only core job is to lambast at Dayak NGOs.