NGO as Citizens & Consumers Watch is very much desired

NGO as Citizens & Consumers Watch is very much desired

After writing in Daily Express “ Need to solve ‘parking crisis’ within the city (Dec8,2019) and “once rich North Borneo stripped to the bare” (dec 15, 2019), we have now come to more serious matters in personal perspective for our own survival as personal securities like finance (possibilities of bankruptcy or even forthcoming destitution) , physical safety even in car parking spaces both open and basement/floors, food security endangering our health in the preparation of our foods from farms to tables and all sorts (including unthinkable scenarios)  that may happen to us in questioned environment.

It has been noticed that some carparks in multi storeyed buildings or complexes may have non functional CCTV for the personal safety of consumers as undesirable behaviour or incidents have been encountered.  Sometimes the lifts in such places can be safety adverse to the consumers. Some vehicles including those e-hailing ones have installed cameras for their own safety but too few to make the desired impact for safe mobility.

 A very young girls walked innocently to her five-storeyed plunged death as filmed/videoed by her own mother for the missing floor plank.

Contagious diseases in our midst like revived polio and increasing cases of TB plus other items unknown to us have come back to society.  There are some people who just fall down and died.

Sabah is known to have vast numbers of illegal from other countries with questioned health status and now some leaders want to provide them continued stay in Sabah under Pas Sementara Sabah (PSS) to further ‘swamp’ us as after PSS is implemented, there is nowhere that we can stop more such people entering porous coastline in Sabah. The scenario of ‘trojan horses’ with all sort of questioned behaviour, characters and background has been with us for decades hence endangering genuine Sabahans beyond control.

Many maybe singing the signature year-end song known as Auld Lang Syne and how we do that in 2019 in grand style or just over a cup of coffee. Also we are also in the season of winter solstice largely practised by the Chinese people in deep winter China where relatives and friends may not see each other again.

As we enter a new decade in a few moment in this Christmas 2019, we must make an effort to keep watch on ALL our personal securities as times have become more critical in most areas of our livelihood and living conditions in personal safety in our movement, our challenges in health and the foods (healthwise?) we consume especially in our time out, our driving, our mobility and our car parks-in doors or out doors with or without CCTV - in operations or just dummy to mislead the consumers by the owners and operators of those areas including public building owners.

So it is no longer that we remain complacent or indifferent to our very own personal security as earlier mentioned in this letter. It is no longer for us to have this attitude that we act only to various scenarios as they occur. We must now take care for our public interest and how to face those challenges at all times.

 Taking care alone in a public scenario is inadequate to ensure our good situation hence we need to set up a corporate voluntary action group like Citizens & Consumers Watch or CCW or SEE SEE Watch to be always on alert at all times to safeguard our own personal securities.

For the genuine local Sabahans with many pressing needs in personal securities we need CCW or SEE SEE watch and be united in concerted effort to mitigate our personal securities to enable us to live in peace and harmony as in decades prior to Malaysia in 1963. We owe this to ourselves, our children and next generation.

So in See See Watch, we keep in touch with your common relationship whilst so many are been embedded in our modern technology of communication lost in the personal touch. Also many are too involved with politicking possibly with futile results.

So over to our local leaders to show genuine concern for all of us in Citizens & Consumers Watch to form such an NGO promptly. Daily Express may take the lead as well.

 Joshua Y C Kong 17/12/2019

Very rich Sabah once has arrived soon to be ‘destitute’

 http://www.dailyexpress.com.my/read/3379/once-rich-north-borneo-is-stripped-to-the-bare/


Very rich Sabah once has arrived soon to be ‘destitute’

Is it a surprise that very rich Sabah once has arrived soon to be “destitute” for obvious reasons since 1963? Now the nation has been staring at 1MDB for a few years already which is indeed a very unfortunate kleptocracy and Sabah cannot avoid contributing fund direct or indirect to settle the massive debts (uncertain how many tens of billions Ringgit) of 1MDB.

Since the early days in Malaysia, there had been massive flight of wealth including ill-gotten gains overseas for all sorts of reasons including migrating.      Such ‘ill gotten’ sort of gain is still leaving Sabah and other states legitimately or otherwise.  Is this being tracked by the authorities? This article only provide a tiny glimpse of all the rotten gains from the tropical forests or south sea timber in great demand overseas.  There is also 1989 WWF’s book titled “Timber from the South Seas” giving a very good account of our timber being traded mainly in Japan with focus on an analysis of Japan’s tropical timber trade and its environmental impact.   Then until the new millennium, the forest had been very much depleted (details of our timber extraction are in my book “Sabah wealth image of woods power” ISBN: 983-2653-08-8 in 2004) for the period 1967-2002 and replaced by the mono crop which has been considered the “golden” crops by the planters. We know who are responsible for our lost treasures in the once pristine forests.  A very thick book could be compiled if all the materials available are easily accessible.

Unknown to many then, there is a small book titled “Kechik di Sabah: Kisah Sebenar” by Syed Mamood Syed Ismail with first edition 1981 by Syed Mahmood Enterprise Ltd’,HongKong and printed by Chung Hwa Printing Co. Ltd, HongKong.

That book is very revealing of all the wealth obtained by Syed Kechik who came to Sabah in September, 1965 and in a few years he accumulated massive “obscene” wealth and it was reported in the first page of that tiny book that the largest bank in the world had reported that Kechik has not less than USD538m largely obtained from timber land concession in Sabah. In that little book, lots of other valuable assets were alleged owned and accumulated by Syed Kechik.  Was any of such ill-gotten gain both inside Sabah and outside recovered from Syed Kechik?  Whoever sent him to Sabah as a young unemployed lawyer should be “cursed” by those unforgivable activities in Sabah. That person could be the “catalyst” in the premature demise of the pristine forests in Sabah as he was director of Yayasan Sabah (YS) for some years. YS was supposed to be the Sabah Sovereign Wealth Fund for the people of Sabah but soon in the PBS Government in the early 1990s, the shares for the people were quietly withdrawn after several dividends were distributed. I hope to start a new Sabah Sovereign Wealth Fund for the discovery of special recovery exercise (SRE) of lost federal revenue yet to be revealed to the Federal Government and the recovery can be into many billions for decades. This has nothing to do with MA63 but a loophole to be closed in the revenue system.

Then we had the unfortunate incident on 6^th June, 1976 and thereafter Sabah was misled into giving away further wealth within our soil in oil and gas plus the island of Labuan in 1984. We are now told that since 1976, Sabah had received RM15.6 billions for the royalties of 5% for PDA exploration and the oil and gas production. How much we have lost is anybody guess especially PDA 1974 Act 144 can be deemed illegal, null and void. I have called RCI on double six and the PDA 1974 on Petronas over massive stolen wealth in its financial reports to put to rest whatever truth may be revealed.

While the leaders in Malaya had promised the “moon’ just prior to the formation of Malaysia of three or four (Singapore included until 1965) parts, MA63 had been largely ‘forgotten” in its implementation in terms of revenue due to Sabah.

We had seen over the 5 decades that Sabah has been getting less and less and now have to share in the burden of repaying the massive debts (international) of anything including accrued interest of RM100 billions.  

Sabah’s demographic growth had been extremely unusual and yet allocation of development fund is lesser rather than a matching increase over same period.

Are we not going through many whammies for decades and for how long more that we have to go on like that?

The day of reckoning can be any time and I call on those who have enriched themselves by exploitation over the natural wealth of Sabah as provided by the creator God search their conscience as the ‘karma’ can be anytime for them.  It would be good to repair the degraded earth to mitigate our common guilt forever. So what a timely precious reminder in a rich very young girl from Johore as filmed by the mother walking to her sudden tragic death in a gap of 1 feet at the end of a walk way five storey high.  Is it a terrible torment for the parents now, isn’t it?  God is watching over our excessive depletion of the earth with a heavy heart. Can we be indifferent or complacent for allowing the earth especially in Sabah and Borneo to be bare of the pristine forests?  I have done my role in outspoken ways and have you?

I think in the hearts and souls of many genuine Sabahans that such tolerance for so long must come to an end and who is going to take the blame if ‘intolerance’ can get better in a bigger group out to see any positive changes for our fortune in our own land?

Who want to be “destitute” likely in current global prevailing difficult economic cycle which can last longer than usual and more painful for most people in today’s regional conflict and challenges?

In difficult economic scenario other adverse human developments can arise that may sink communities into desperate stances in education, health, welfare, social liaison and even harmony, All these we must be avoided in society in nation building.

To add to our midst, terrorism in certain groups are also emerging to give us so much concern and our productivity can be adversely impacted.

Let my small contribution in this letter be an alert for us to ponder as how the slippery financial and economic road can be halted very soon in resources rich Sabah once but now very much depleted beyond the control of most of us.

We pray that we can trust our God to deliver us from such turbulence and tribulation and our faith in God in consolation would help us with our endurance so far to have life improvement.

Joshua Y C Kong 7/12/2019.

Lets solve our parking woes in KK as crisis escalates

Lets solve our parking woes in KK as crisis escalates

We all know we have regular traffic congestion in CBD KK and around KK in many satellite towns/ commercial centres.

One of such reasons is the unusual number of vehicles amongst us when there are lacking in roads and especially parking spaces hence hindering mobility in urban and suburban areas.

While we may not reduce the vehicles entering Kota Kinabalu proper, do we have enough parking spaces for the excessive vehicles?

There are lots of parking issues and we need to address them accordingly.

The parking woes can be exacerbated by the increasing number of multi-storeyed buildings and shopping malls and the congestion would be worst when various festivals come around.

Since 1980s, MPKK and now DBKK had various systems to derive incomes from vehicles parking, and are such parking problems really addressed well? We are aware of parking penalties on top of parking problems pilling up in Kota Kinabalu for decades without any likely solutions to mitigate such matters.

We had been using the paper tickets for parking charges and we know all the associated problems in such systems as implementation of such system can be much questioned (both consumers, implementers and enforcers) and even more troublesome to enforce collection of penalties from parking offenders.

We have also seen in recent years with various big shopping malls and complexes that parking of cars in such places is administered by the auto machines where entries and exits are done with tickets and payment resolved instantly with own basement and other floors parking.  But there are still problems at large as there are really not enough parking spaces in most business zones for various reasons as I will later comment.

DBKK may have introduced the pre-paid parking tickets in recent years and it is still far from over for our parking woes although the e-hailing vehicles and instant motor cycles deliveries have slightly reduce the numbers of vehicles for parking.

The pre-paid parking tickets are seen thrown all over the streets and roads.  That is an adverse environmental impact.

In UK (1990s) it was the coins operated parking meters on the streets of the cities while some off streets or back streets locations use the sticker’s vending machines. Once in London I had my hired car clamped parking in a metered space as I was unaware of the late evening still needed pre-paid charges.  It was great difficulty to get my clamped car released as it was after work even after payment. With such an experience, this can be a great setback for any tourist with hired car.

In Kota Kinabalu in the 1980s, MPKK used to tow my car once to the pound yard for a weak case as my car was not blocking traffic. Once the car was towed, how would MPKK and I prove the case of violation or otherwise?

This letter is only a glimpse of parking encounters with the city authority.

We have also noticed some inconsistencies in our high density buildings and business zones where the authority’s policies have contributed in our ‘ parking crisis’ in recent decades.  What had been done cannot be undone now and we have to live with that now.  Even in some well/heavily supported shopping malls with floors of parking spaces, it may take an hour or more moving there to find a parking lot and clearly an unpleasant experience.

Who do we blame for the ‘parking crisis’ in all Government hospitals and clinics in and around KK? Are we having too many patients unplanned for?

So our ‘parking crisis’ due to shortage of spaces result in ugly double parkings and now DBKK have started to install plastic coloured poles in the middle dividing lines on the streets giving temporary relief to blockages but deter consumers to do business there for inability to park.

So I would suggest DBKK conduct a few townhall meetings to address ‘parking crisis’. 

I would also suggest that all new high density buildings including Government ones would have really adequate parking floors. Failing that, the Government introduces a policy of owning all parking floors by the local authorities. In such ways, the increased floors would meet the demand of spaces while generate revenue using modern auto gate collection machines.

In such “build and operate” parking floors approach by DBKK, no streets parkings especially for medium /long term sessions be implemented to allow better traffic flows.

There has been for sometimes already a proposal that Luyang in Foh Sang has a multi storeyed car park but isn’t it better that the township be re-developed for the owners and tenants as commercial activities there during the construction of new parking only building would be adversely affected. The existing owners be exchanged for new lots in the re-development project as win-win for all.

Wherever possible, the pre-paid tickets (costly printing and litterings) be replaced with paperless auto machines in most areas with installed gates (wherever possible) to reduce penalties scenarios. Also some small back streets parking zones be serviced by stickers coin-operated vending machines. With such systems, we can mitigate non-payment of penalties, paperless or less paper, less wasteful tickets printing and control thereof and reduce human deployment and associated weakness of parking attendants especially in raining seasons with costs saving.

It would be really a liveable and friendly Kota Kinabalu City for tourists and local with improved traffic flows and less congestion with adequate parking for the business community and consumers alike to be more productive.

Joshua Y C Kong 3/12/2019