We can never afford to lose Tanjung Aru Beach

We can never afford to lose Tanjung Aru Beach

Tanjung Aru Beach (TAB) in unfortunately allowed to “degenerate” into Tanjung Aru Eco Development Sdn Bhd. or TAED since 2013 by exPrime Minister Najib Razak as aided and abetted by exCM Musa Aman for reasons best known to them.

TAED has been a thorn for a few years of endless debate bordering on hopelessness as the substance of TAED’s intention is simply questioned and dubious.  Lots of pros and cons had been raised via the SEIA of the Environment Department and many sleepless nights for activists and conservationists alike.

Despite the new State Government in its manifesto GE14 of keeping the TAB untouched, the new State Government under Warisan has changed its stance on TAB and TAED for fresh development.

The latest development of TAED is that as exposed in a news article titled “No State funding now for TAED” (DE 20 Oct, 2019) where the state minister Datuk Junz Wong had exposed new development with TAED.

It is indeed very worrying that we may lose TAB in most unfortunate way as the article stated that “the final decision lies in the hands of the Chief Minister and the State Cabinet over the estimated RM4 billions needed…” But the heading “No state funding now for TAED” has given away that outsiders are coming in such fund and no further details had been revealed.  China funding has been in the news everywhere but can we lose TAB if China allows the fund to come but no way for Sabah to repay the loan as there is no feasibility paper to show the performance of TAED.

Before we talk of funding, it is seen that TAED is in a mess in TAB even spending RM90m in various   preliminaries including purchase of land thereof.  TAB is now devoid of its many heritage buildings in great disrepair and plundering by illegal trespassing of the private TAED land given the land title in 2016.  So far no steps were taken to protect those buildings of heritage value. So it can be said that RM90m is wasted public fund and no improvement to TAB was undertaken so far.  I hope the relevant authorities should take TAED Sdn. Bhd to task for the poor state of affairs in TAB as expected of the land owner.

Until the full facts of the massive funder are disclosed, it is unjust to speculate over this possibility.

If it is China or any country to come up with RM4 billons, how would Sabah propose to pay back such finance given the current state of financial affairs in Sabah vis-à-vis Federal Government?

So it is premature to do anything with TAED in case we may lose almost everything in TAB as every funder would take advantage of the prime land like TAB which is worth anything up to RM30billions. We must avoid such land grab at all costs.  Sabah has lost too much to outsiders and yet we have not learnt anything.

Meanwhile, I have conveyed to CM a revenue scheme where a loophole in the administration of federal revenue can allow the nation to recover massive revenue going into billions of Ringgit and hopefully Sabah would be allocated a substantial amount like 45% for my special initiative in this undertaking to be implemented successfully within two years.

With the setup of the proposed Sabah Sovereign Wealth Fund (SSWF), we can carry out much improvement in Sabah’s infrastructure ourselves with internal fund to generate much more desired revenue for the people in Sabah.

Less haste to keep Sabah intact naturally.

Joshua Y C Kong23/10/2019