Nothing came of BYOB police report

Nothing came of BYOB police report

Published on: Sunday, April 30, 2017

By Joshua Y C Kong
SABAH Environment Protection Association (SEPA) forged a smart partnership with the government through the State Tourism, Culture and Environment Ministry to form EAC in 1997 with the aim of initiating a joint responsibility between the government and the people to carry out environmental activities that can contribute towards enhancing environmental quality.

Unfortunately this smart partnership had run aground when a police report was made by sepa in April, 2015, after the due process of settlement of an accounting function of EAC failed and the police report appears to have not been pursued after two years.

I had been the founder member of Sepa since 1984 together with Mayor Datuk Yeo and an EAC member since 1997 with much concern in environment.

This ongoing “crisis” on Bring Your Own Bags (BYOB) is indeed a black mark for environment activities for a few years since BYOB was implemented.

The joint project of Sepa with the Ministry in BYOB was reported to have collected a lot of money, probably RM1 million.

The crux of the “crisis” was that the accounts of the BYOB project had not been audited for years.

There is an allegation that the said money had not been properly accounted for while there was a shakeup in the management team of BYOB.

Just in passing, I wonder why a report on page 2 of Daily Express on 17 April, 2017 headed “Hidden Accounts: NGO under probe” after a police report was lodged with the name of the NGO not disclosed.

Joshua Y C Kong