High chief Jabu and his 48000 hectares of NCR land

There are 6000 long houses without electricity and piped water. That’s since 1963 when Sarawak became part of Malaysia. It has been 30 years of rule by Taib Mahmud, things have not changed for the 6000 long houses.

What do you call this? You call a spade a spade. Its gross negligence. Its balding incompetence. They are broken promises.

The people of Sarawak should not look at the identity of the people who made the promises to better the lives of these long house dwellers. If they do, their judgment can become blurry. Look at the issue objectively. They should just throw out the incompetent fools who manage the state. So, it happens to be Taib Mahmud and his gang who ruled Sarawak for umpteen years. Zero in on incompetence and negligence. You can’t have this kind of people running the state for us.

Democracy means exercising a choice. You can choose to throw out incompetent, negligent and corrupt leadership.

The issue is always this:- Leadership and its management of the entrusted entity. Its leadership and management of the state.

Just think at the micro level. Don’t bother about the dams. Ignore the eye pleasing river side esplanades and so forth. Look at yourselves. Have your lives become improved and better? If not blame it squarely on the leaders who hold the powers and the purse strings. Don’t let RM 500 and RM 1000 sudden windfall erase the bitter memory of having to put up with incompetent and negligent leaders.

We have not yet begun analyzing the rape and plunder of NCR lands and the issue of Al Kitab yet.

Let’s single out your own kind first. That deputy CM representing the Dayak communities- Alfred Jabu. You have qualified dayaks among you and still you are suffering fools by continuing to support people like Jabu.

Let’s judge Jabu in his capacity of Chairman of Salcra. Would you entrust him to manage your company? Elsewhere people sack incompetent managers. Here you are willing to put with masochistic pains. The pains are inflicted by Jabu and his gang of cabals.

Just look at his lifestyle. Jabu has a palatial house and is noted for the conspicuous wealth of his family. Look at the decor inside the house. Look at the additional wing to his already large mansion. But he can’t give out dividends to the NCR landowners whose land he manages.

So, could it be that this most incompetent manager is nevertheless a highly competent thief? You can all a person other than by this term. Compare his lifestyle with that of those poor Native Customary Rights Landowners, who participated in SALCRA scheme more than 30 years ago.

Salcra is something our own Felda or Felcra Schemes. Owners of small parcels of land pool their land resource under one centralized, economies of scale justified management. The management company is called SALCRA. The original aim was to rescue the NCR land owners from poverty. After 30 years, they are still scraping a living from the most miserable dividends that could possibly be imagined from the so-called business partnership run on their behalf by Jabu. You can judge him solely on this. Forget the kinship. Forget being from the same ancestral bloodline.

You have two leaders at the helm doing the same thing. What Taib Mahmud does with his rapacious ‘Joint Venture Companies’, Jabu is doing the same screw job through his chairmanship of SALCRA.

How does the SALCRA scheme work? Under the programme the state government offers NCR landowners formal title to their customary lands, if they agree to join in the SALCRA state-run palm oil plantations. So SALCRA is the state-run palm oil plantation. In return the landowners will get formal title which is claimable against the whole world and also promised a share of the proceeds.

What can participants expect? They can and should expect a well-run management company, whose management is transparent and accountable and which gives out dividends. No one who owns palm oil plantations does not make money. More so in recent years when the price for palm oil has been good.

If Jabu does not make money, or make as much money at the average industry players and is not forthcoming about the management of the company and does not give out dividends or gives out below industry dividends, what do these things show? These show that Jabu and his cabals are incompetent fools who are hiding so many things. If they don’t give out dividends or give below industry average dividends and returns, they are lining up their own pockets. These are valid and justifiable conclusions to make.

Jabu has to answer to the 20,000 thousand families who have been coopted into the SALCRA scheme. Yet SALCRA has not given any public financial information on how it runs the management company. What dividends there are, are announced on a whim and at his own political convenience.

Jaby has under his direct control, 48,000 hectares of Native Customary Rights Lands through SALCRA (most of it planted with mature palms). He has not provided a single audit or report on SALCRA’s management within the past 35 years. The landowners themselves have no representation on the Board or within Management or have any way of gaining any information whatsoever about the finances of the business in which they are supposed to be partners.

This is the classic ‘give me your trust’ and ask not what the government can do for you kind of thinking. The government and the high official is the dispenser of largesse, of sustenance. The people- in this case, the NCR landowners are his minders, the ward.

The NCR landowners just wait and hope that their dividends will turn up at some stage in their bank accounts as a gift from the powerful chief. They wait for chief Jabu with bowls in hand. Numerous accounts exist of landowners who have received no dividends for years or otherwise pathetic pay outs that would not feed their families for a week.

How does the high chief Jabu handle his ward- the inhabitants who have given him their trust? Jabu habitually uses the dividend as a form of political blackmail, as if it was some kind of generous gesture or bribe to induce the SALCRA participants do his bidding.