Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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KUCHING: Sarawak will depart from the vision set by its controversial former chief minister Tun Abdul Taib Mahmud to industrialise the state. Instead, the state will ensure that basic needs in rural areas are met. So said Chief Minister Tan Sri Adenan Satem in an interview to mark his first year in office.

The state was not abandoning Taib’s plan to turn Sarawak into a fully developed state by 2030, but was only making a departure to ensure that its vast rural interiors had basic infrastructure, Adenan said in a live interview over national broadcaster RTM’s TV1 channel.

He said the main emphasis of his government will be to focus on developing the state’s rural areas and giving rural folk the basic infrastructure they had long wanted.

“That’s our new policy. The urban areas, they have almost everything.” He said providing good roads, piped water supply and electricity in areas that did not have them will now be his focus.

“Sarawak is a big state with many remote areas. To reach them means having roads, roads and more roads.

“We give them the basics first before we talk about anything else. Why talk about having TVs when they have no electricity.”

Adenan said even though much of Sarawak’s rural areas were lagging behind in basic needs despite having been part of Malaysia for 51 years, “it is still not too late”.

He said providing infrastructure and creating economic opportunities and jobs in the interior was necessary not only to curb rural-urban migration, but to close the economic gap and reduce wealth disparity. “We need to have more middle-class people.”

He also told TV1 that although such goals might not be achieved in a generation, there was no reason why Sarawak could not eventually succeed.

Adenan, 71, succeeded his former brother-in-law, Abdul Taib, as the state’s fifth chief minister on Feb 28 last year.  Abdul Taib had led the state for 33 years. He courted controversy when he was the subject of an inconclusive corruption investigation into his wealth.

Adenan in his first year in office announced a crackdown on illegal logging and issued stern warnings to licensed timber companies to keep their subcontractors in check.

Under him, Cabinet members in his state government signed an integrity pledge and promised to declare their assets to him, although the move has been described as window dressing.

The one-hour interview covered a wide range of issues, in which Adenan also announced that electricity tariffs would be reduced by up to 40% for commercial and industrial users, similar to that enjoyed by domestic consumers.

Negotiations were also underway to reduce and eventually abolish toll at three of the state’s tolled bridges — in Kuching, Sibu and Miri.

Adenan also said he had no objections to giving legal recognition to the term “Dayak” as a race for Sarawak bumiputeras to identify themselves with, instead of “dan lain-lain” (others) in the race category in federal government forms.

However, he said there must first be a consensus among all Dayaks, a term that covers all of Sarawak’s indigenous people. He said the Bumiputera Minority Technical Committee was studying the word and would make a recommendation to the federal government.

Adenan announced recently that Putrajaya had agreed to remove “dan lain-lain” in government forms and replace it with an appropriate word. The news stirred debate among Sarawak’s nearly two dozen ethnic groups on what the new word should be.

A motion is likely to be tabled in the coming state legislative assembly sitting by DAP Sarawak chief Chong Chieng Jen to amend the definition of “natives” in the Sarawak Interpretation Ordinance 2005 to include the word “Dayak”.

Adenan has received praise from various quarters, including the opposition, for his first year in office.

State PKR vice-chairman See Chee How said the chief minister was “keen to carve his name on the hearts of Sarawakians”.

The Batu Lintang assemblyman said Adenan had shown political will to practise good governance and administration through better control and enforcement.

“I hope that he will be a true reformist chief minister that the state needs to transform Sarawak to be the best state in the country,” See said.

Sarawak United People’s Party president Datuk Professor Dr Sim Kui Hian said Adenan had a heart for the people as shown by his actions.

“We strongly stand with him on many of the policies based on the principles of good governance, moderation and social harmony.”

A member of Adenan’s Cabinet, Land Development Minister Tan Sri Dr James Masing, said the chief minister was a “straight-talking, no-nonsense politician”.

“Sarawak, being the biggest state in Malaysia and with vast economic potential, needs a chief executive who rules with a steel hand in velvet glove,” Masing said when asked to comment on Adenan’s first year. — The Malaysian Insider

 

This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on February 27, 2015.

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