An
independent inquiry over Sabah Foundation.
I refer to the interesting report “ Yayasan Sabah
Group driving nation’s future” DE 28
May, 2017 and I quote “ Throughout the months of March and April this year,
Score A+ Seminar was organised …. Score A+ seminar was held to provide an
opportunity for form five students to better understand how to answer exam
questions in preparation for Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) examinations.”
Reading such an extraordinary title as “driving the
nation’s future” give me a world of pondering as what is this really?
Objects
The objects of the Sabah Foundation, today operationally referred to as Yayasan
Sabah Group was established through the Sabah Foundation Enactment No. 8 of the
Sabah State Legislative Assembly in 1966 and several amendments thereafter. The objects are as follows:-
1. Uplifting
the quality of education and educational facilities as well as providing
educational opportunities for the people of Sabah;
2. Relieving of
poverty; and
3. Undertaking
of activities which are benevolent and charitable in nature.
The Vision according to the homepage of YSG is A Dynamic,
People Oriented, Committed and Caring Organisation.
The Mission is to uplift the quality of life of Malaysians in
Sabah.
Please note
the slight “discrepancy” in the objects and the mission as the people of Sabah
now include Malaysians in Sabah.
The
homepage of YSG also stated as follows:-The objectives of the foundation are
providing education and educational facilities for all Malaysians in Sabah;
creating opportunities for a more equitable distribution of economic wealth
among the people in Sabah; and providing aids to charitable institutions and
victims of natural disasters. A beacon
of hope, the Group to this day, remains the PEOPLE's organisation and keeps
moving forward to be the best of the best.
At
the end of each financial year, as soon as the accounts of the Board have been
audited, the Board shall cause a copy of the statement of account, together
with a copy of any report of the Auditor-General, to be transmitted to the
Chief Minister who shall cause the same to be laid before the Legislative
Assembly and cause a copy thereof to be published in the Gazette. (homepage).
While
the beacon of hope is the PEOPLE’s organisation, much is still to be desired of
YS in its role in society since 1966. I
hope as a start the audited accounts be freely available to any Sabahan. Now the YSG is so big, is the audit really
done by the Auditor General?
Dividends
Since
the beginning, there were Sabahans registered to be beneficiaries of the
“dividends” in several tranches of distributions and discontinued in the early
1990s without any official announcement. Many still miss such cash handouts
especially in this few decades of hardship when YSG seems to be doing well with
such tagline “driving nation’s future”.
Standing
firm on its mission to uplift the quality of life of Malaysians in Sabah, the
Group has crafted an all-inclusive plan - the Yayasan Sabah Group
Transformation Programme 2013 - 2023. The plan covers 11 initiatives. The Core values are honest, committed,
caring, dynamic, firm, resilent, result oriented.
The
organisation structure has been defined as Sabah State Government- Yayasan
Sabah- and corporate structure in 5 groups namely Sepangar Sdn. Bhd., Borneo
Refugia Sdn. Bhd., Innoprise corporation
Sdn. Bhd., KKYS Sdn Bhd., Uni YS sdn. Bhd. However, in the website of
YSG only Board Of Directors for Innoprise Corporation Sdn. Bhd. (1988) is
shown. Surfing through the webpages of
YSG, nothing much is mentioned of the other four groups except some directories
of the many subsidiaries. Why the
incomplete effort to the declaration of result oriented amongst the core value?
Coming
back to the Score A+ Seminar and the educational effort of YSG, are these
events conducted in English (no mention of this in the said report)? Recently several important calls by the
Cabinet that we bring back English as a medium of instruction to enhance the
knowledge consumption, what is the stand of YS on this as “driving the nation’s
future” in the context of globalisation in our midst.
While
it is indeed very good to know the way to answer questions especially at
examinations to score high marks, it is equally important that students be
trained or exposed to asking questions in any scenarios and not to be disturbed
by recent slapping of participants at two events in Putrajaya and Pulau Penang
for asking questions. I thank God that I
had been asking many questions from the floor in many seminars and conferences
for decade, and never been slapped by anyone even the questions were not
answered.
Also
with the resources rich YSG, why only a few towns in Sabah were benefitted by
the Score A+ Seminar?
Audited annual accounts
I
wish I can have access to the annual audited accounts now to give my views on
the financial performance of YSG like I do for Suria Capital Holdings Bhd. for
almost 20 years.
Fortunately
or unfortunately, there are lots of activities
business/commercial/social/charity of the YSG through various subsidiaries
whose accounts are not open to the public.
How are the 5 major corporations performing are unknown when there are
vast resources in YSG?
The contributions of Yayasan Sabah Group to the
State of Sabah and its people are not limited to education and social
development. In the commercial and industrial sectors, it is acknowledged as a
pioneer, leader, innovator and facilitator of growth. Innoprise Corporation Sdn. Bhd. (ICSB) was
incorporated in 1988 as an investment vehicle, cum management and holding
company of Yayasan Sabah's group of companies. Its mission, "To Be the
Investment Vehicle of Yayasan Sabah Group of Companies for a Better Future of
Malaysians in Sabah" is a clear message of its steadfast commitment to
fulfill its corporate objectives in supplementing and complementing the
government's efforts to bring socioeconomic progress of the people. (according
to the homepage)
To sustain its effective role as the main generator
of funds for the Group, ICSB has expanded its income generation base from
traditional forestry and wood-based sectors to include other productive
sectors. In lieu of this, it has diversified into businesses such as tourism,
agro plantation as well as oil and gas. (according to the homepage).
“Sabah Foundation Study
Loan Full Settlement List”
Fortunate or otherwise, nothing much is mentioned
about the disbursements of scholarships and loans to students to pursue higher
education locally and overseas except for a blog titled “Sabah Foundation Study Loan Full Settlement List”. Is it really true that 3766 lenders/borrowers as at
Feb 2017 have outstanding amounts of various sums of up to RM150,000 ( total
not stated) as far back as 1974? The
total amount can be tens of millions Ringgit.
Such borrowers are today successful rich professionals. Why they do not
want to repay the long outstanding loans? What I know is that YS failed to
follow up with the collateral offered in the application for loan by making a
charge of such assets. Instead, YS had
tried to go for the guarantors who are likely unable to pay for what they never
took the loan money. The collateral
would likely be the family’s assets.
Scholarships
The
next question would the YS provide a figure of accumulated scholarship funds
disbursed for the same period? Some the
borrowers could also had access to both scholarship and loans.
On
the other fronts of YSG, it is deemed necessary to highlight certain
developments that need to be reviewed as desirable to benefit society and
consumers.
It has been 50 years since its establishment and the
Group is reaching its pinnacle of success, achieving its objectives of providing
scholarships and loans to needy students as well as students who excelled
academically to further their studies locally and abroad. (according to the
homepage website).
Yet YS cannot produce more home breed Vice
Chancellors (VC) for the only Universiti Malaysia Sabah to keep our educational
interest and priority intact in the next succession in the context of “driving
nation’s future”. Isn’t it there is a
demand that the next VC be Sabahan as the two previous ones were as per
Malaysia Agreement 1963?
On
6 June 1996, Innoprise Corporation Sdn. Bhd. (ICSB), the investment arm of the
Group, bought 51 percent of the company's share Norsechem (Sabah) Sdn. Bhd. (NSSB), thus under the new structure,
Permodalan Bumiputra Sabah (PBSB) is
holding 29.4 percent equity, Hexza
Corporation Berhad (HCB) 19.6 percent and ICSB 51 percent.
ICSB
through the subsidiary company manufactures formalin and different types of
resin for the wood working industries in Sabah. The factory is located at Jalan
Batu Sapi, Karamunting, Sandakan.
Is
ICSB/NSSB doing great business as the sole producer of formalin as it is
regularly alleged that much of our fish haul around Sabah have been “preserved”
by this corpse item? I had asked the
Police at a Police forum a few years ago why there is great focus on illicit
drugs while there is no regulation on the sale and use of formalin when all
such products –illegal or otherwise- can both bring death to the consumers?
Till now is it true that formalin is still freely available to the fishermen to
keep their catches “fresh”? Would the
Government have a re-look on this formalin with proper regulation?
So
YS and YSG still got a lot to do to achieve the noble desire of “driving
nation’s future” especially in the arena of conservation and protection of
environment.
In
1967, coinciding with the formation of the Sabah Foundation, the Ministry of
Natural Resources was abolished. The government gave the foundation 3,300 acre
(It is not 3,300 acres of land but 3,300 sq mile of land.) of land and a grant
of 1 million Ringgit to fund the start-up of the
organisation. In 1970, Sabah
Foundation was tasked, through a 100-year lease, of managing the 855,000
hectares of virgin
forest.
(Wikipedia).
Much
of YS land of pristine virgin forest has since been converted to plantation
land of largely mono crop oil palm and little areas for other trees like fast
softwood and rubber trees when these are largely alien plants instead of
endemic ones. It is known that such
alien plants are threats to the biodiversity very rich once in Sabah.
Environmental
Education
Against
the back ground of massive oil palm plantations owned and managed by YSG, and
logging by YSG, YSG has embarked on environmental education as far back as 1988
by establishing the Sabah Nature Club (SNC) with the cooperation from the Sabah
Education Department in promoting environmental education and awareness among
students and as part of the school curriculum. In organising environmental
education activities such as Nature Orientation Course, Sustainable Development
Course for community leaders and other environmental awareness camp and talks all
over Sabah for its members, SNC uses Danum Valley, Maliau Basin, Imbak Canyon
and other conservation and rehabilitated areas as venues for its activities.
SNC
memberships are opened to students and teachers in primary and secondary
schools as well as institutions of higher learning in Sabah. It also offers
"Friends of SNC" membership for the public. Since its inception, the
club has more than 43,000 registered members. (homepage of YSG).
That
appears to be good to a certain extent but our depleted rainforests would never
likely to be recovered in years or even a generation to come as it is in a 100
years cycle for maturity. However, SNC
is only environmental education on the forests.
SEE Sabah 2016
I,
as Chairman and cooperative Koperasi Pengguna Sabah Bhd. had proposed to the
Federal and Sabah State Government for a Sabah Environment Expo 2016 (SEE Sabah
2016) together with other state agencies and major business stakeholders. But this has yet to materialise despite my
personal approach to the Chief Minister of Sabah on 19th March,
2016.
It
is indeed a great co-incidence that after the letter of mine “Even Chief Judge
agrees our wildlife, environ situation critical” appeared in Daily Express on
January 22, 2017 with my name missing thereon, and then Chief Minister Datuk
Seri Musa Aman launched the publication “Sabah State Policy on the Environment”
during the 14th State Assembly Sitting Kota Kinabalu on 12 April, 2017 making
Sabah the first state to have initiated the formulation of the policy.
The
policy outlines strategies and action plans based on five thematic aspects of
the environment, namely land, air, water, biodiversity and social dimension.
However,
it is important to take cognisant that our environmental degrading circumstance
is huge on all fronts of environment that a little booklet of 44 pages in
Bahasa Malaysia and English would be too little to deal with our critical
situation.
The
objects of SEE Sabah 2016 now extended to SEE Sabah 2017 would be a huge effort
of mass support from the consumers and the public to conclude with an
Environment Blue Print (EBP)– the first ever for Malaysia and beyond. EBP can be into thousands of pages would be
the official documents to guide and enforce environment principles strictly.
So
I would urge the resources rich YSG as representing the State Government and
with the blessing of the Chief Minister come forward to implement SEE Sabah
2017 to end the impasse of the deteriorating environment which so far seems to
be endless without any solutions despite ineffective piecemeal handling of such
critical issues.
Bankruptcy
Having
written so much on YS and YSG, there was a recent allegation by an assemblymen
in the Legislative Assembly in April, 2017 that YSG is “bankrupt” and denied by
the Chief Minister saying “YS had
assets worth RM14 billion and cash totalling more than RM420 million and forked
out millions of ringgit for scholarships annually.”
Isn’t it YS sort of a body providing the Sovereign
fund for Sabah like the very rich Temasek in Singapore? After exploiting the resources of 3,000 sq
mile of pristine virgin rainforest for 50 years, we only have RM14 billion when
we should have up to RM500 billion if it had been managed transparently and publicly
accountable? There had been no distribution of dividends since 1990s.
YS did not really started on the right footing
unfortunately when the first executive director was expelled from Sabah with
prolonged litigation ensued.
Full independent inquiry
So I would like that the State Government call for
a full independent inquiry over the performance of YS and YSG after 50 years.
We need to verify the worth of YS land of almost 1m acres. Fully planted oil
palm plantations is worth RM30,000 per acre? YS is on the threshold of “driving
nation’s future” hence a proper review is much desired.
Joshua Y. C. Kong 30/5/2017
