Sarawak: Blacklisted Illegal-Logging Tycoon Involved In Running Malaysian World Heritage Site

08 December 2010

Every tourist visiting the Gunung Mulu National Park contributes to enriching the Taib and the Yaw families - the main culprits in the destruction of Sarawak's tropical rainforest.

By Bruno Manser Fonds

Corruption scandal over the Gunung Mulu National Park widens as Samling owner Yaw Teck Seng and his family holding are identified as significant shareholders of the Royal Mulu Resort

Yaw Teck Seng, the controlling shareholder of the controversial Samling timber group, holds a significant equity stake in Borsamulu Resorts, a company that manages all the tourism activities in the Gunung Mulu National Park, Sarawak's UNESCO-listed World Heritage Site. Samling has recently been blacklisted by the Norwegian Government because of its involvement in large-scale illegal logging and environmental destruction in Malaysia and Guyana.

Map of Gunung Mulu National Park

Research by the Bruno Manser Fund has shown that two companies, Sarawak Land and Plieran, who hold a 26% stake in Borsamulu Resorts, are closely related to Samling. Sarawak Land is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Yaw family holding that controls Samling. Plieran is jointly owned by Samling founder Yaw Teck Seng and four children of the Sarawak Chief Minister via two front companies, KBE (Malaysia) and Daya Syukra.

Last week's disclosure that Chief Minister Taib Mahmud has a personal stake in Borsarmulu Resort, a company directed by Taib's sister Raziah and her husband, has provoked a storm of outrage in Sarawak. The new findings mean that every tourist visiting the Gunung Mulu National Park contributes to enriching the Taib and the Yaw families - the main culprits in the destruction of Sarawak's tropical rainforest - while the local Berawan and Penan communities hardly benefit from the conservation area at all.

Berawan community protests against Borsarmulu Resort, the Taib- and Samling-owned management company of the Gunung Mulu National Park.

Corruption must not be allowed to be part of a World Heritage Site.

The Bruno Manser Fund is to lodge a complaint with the UNESCO World Heritage Committee concerning the management and ownership structures of the Gunung Mulu National Park. Corruption must not be allowed to be part of a World Heritage Site. The Bruno Manser Fund is asking the Sarawak state government to hand over the Royal Mulu Resort and the management of the park facilities to the local communities whose native lands have been taken off them for the National Park.

Welcome To Mulu

More than 15 years ago, there was also about this same kind of project to recycle waste etc etc at Taman Negara, Kuala Tahan. Do you know what happen now? It was abandoned. (You can still see the remains of this project at Taman Negara Resort) So all this project is just hangat-hangat tahi ayam (hot-hot chicken shit). Just to spend money and publicity? There are no commitment to protect nature. This is ecotourism. Hell!

-----------

NST Online
2008/08/06
Mulu visitors pile up a stinker
By : Desmond Davidson

KUCHING: Gunung Mulu national park, the crown jewel of Sarawak tourism, is developing a smelly problem.

The Unesco World Heritage site in northern Sarawak, renowned for its ancient limestone caves, is facing difficulty in disposing of solid waste left by human visitors, and this is causing concern.

The problem stems from the area's lack of a local council, which also means there are no waste collection and disposal services available.

This is compounded by the fact that the administrator of the park, the Sarawak Fores- try Corporation, and the operators of chalets and hotels in the area, are prohibited, by both environmental and national park laws, from disposing of their solid waste by burning, or creating a landfill or dump site.

"It's a serious problem. But we are looking for a solution," said Natural Resources and Environmental Board (NREB) assistant controller Peter Sawal yesterday.

The national park generates just under a tonne of solid waste a day, with the Royal Mulu Resort generating the bulk of it at 400kg.

Solid wastes were once shipped out by boat to Marudi, but as the shipping contractor charged between RM1,800 to RM2,800 a month, that disposal solution became too expensive.

The effort to save costs has led some to indiscriminately dump waste on open ground just behind the resort.

Sawal said a jointly-developed NREB and Japan International Corporation Agency (JICA) solution is currently undergoing trials at Sekolah Menengah Kebangsaan Siburan, a school on the outskirts of the city along the Kuching-Serian Road.

A professor from Japan's Meisei University, Shuji Yoshizawa, is fine-tuning his new composting technique, which he successfully developed from recycling food wastes and non-revenue generating wastes like cardboard boxes and animal waste.

"If successful, this composting technique will be implemented at Mulu," Sawal said.

The trial was meant to be sited in Mulu, but logistical problems forced it to be held nearer here.

The school, which has a student population of over 2,000, of which 429 are boarders, was picked as the trial site because it generates the same amount of solid waste as the Royal Mulu Resort.

The trial and Yoshizawa's working paper are expected to be completed in two months.

Unesco queries dam plan in Sarawak

Tony Thien
Jul 5, 08 3:35pm
Malaysiakini

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) has stepped in to seek clarification from Malaysian authorities concerning a controversial dam project in Sarawak said to affect a world heritage site.

The Unesco World Heritage Centre had on June 25 wanted the Malaysian authorities ‘to clarify the situation and provide us with any further information on the hydropower plans at Gunung Mulu National Park World Heritage site, a spokesman of the Paris-based UN organisation confirmed to the Switzerland-based Bruno-Manser Fund (BMF).

BMF stated this in an email to Malaysiakini today.

A leaked confidential document, which was made public by the BMF, has recently shown Sarawak Energy Berhad’s (SEB) plan to realize a 220 MW dam on Sarawak’s Tutoh river.

The proposed dam would submerge parts of the Gunung Mulu National Park that is one of only two Unesco World Heritage sites in Malaysia.

The proposed Tutoh dam is part of SEB’s controversial scheme to realize twelve new hydropower projects in Sarawak from 2008 to 2020.

If these plans were to be realized, several thousand natives would lose their traditional lands in the Bornean rainforest and would have to be relocated.

While Sarawak’s energy consumption amounted to 1120 MW in 2005, the new projects have a power generation capacity of 7000 MW.

Sarawak, Malaysia’s largest state located on the northern coast of Borneo, is criss-crossed by rivers, and the Sarawak government has announced plans to harness its hydro-power potentials, a move that has been accelerated because of rising fuel costs and the global demand for clean air and environment.

Bakun's unresolved problems

Like the existing Batang Ai and Bakun Dams, it is also feared that the new dam will also lead to the displacement of many natives from their traditional lands.

Even the yet-to-the-completed 2400 MW Bakun Dam is facing many long-standing and unresolved problems following the resettlement of about 10,000 natives as they complain of lack of amenities and lack of suitable land for cultivation and loss of income from traditional sources.

Sime Darby, a major player in the development of the hydro dam project, has announced it is pulling out and this has threatened to delay the start of the construction of the undersea cable from Sarawak to Peninsular Malaysia to bring the excess power from Bakan and future dams to the mainland.

Tenaga Nasional Bhd chairperson Leo Moggie, commenting on this, told Malaysiakini in Miri recently that the government would have to find a new company to take over from Sime Darby. Up to now, he had no idea who that would be.

Without the undersea cable link, it would be meaningless to embark on the development of so many hydro dams in Sarawak as it is unlikely that Sarawak could find energy-intensive industries within a short period of time to take up all the available energy, after the start of the proposed smelter plants in Bintulu.

“It does look things may slow down a little,” industry sources said, adding that “the planned projects will go on, perhaps on a re-scheduled implementation plan.”

More here: http://forestexplorers.blogspot.com/2008/06/sarawaks-12-new-dams-alarm.html

Mulu park to stay untouched

Mulu park to stay untouched? I just couldn't believe it. I can only presume that there are not enough profitable timber to harvest or there are still logging in out part of Sarawak so much so that logging (and therefore building a road) is not yet needed at Mulu.
Time will tell whether the government is sincere.


Staronline
Monday April 21, 2008
KUCHING:
The Mulu National Park will be preserved in its pristine condition for future generations, said Sarawak Chief Minister Tan Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud.

He said it was for this reason that the Government had decided against constructing a road to the world heritage site from the northern part of the state.

The park, which has four show caves, is only accessible by air from Miri or by river.

“Mulu is doing very well. We hope that it will be handed down to our younger generations in the same pristine condition,” added Taib during a state banquet in honour of visiting Prince Albert II of Monaco at the state assembly building on Saturday.

Head of State Tun Abang Muhammad Salahuddin and his consort Datuk Patinggi Norkiah, Taib’s wife Datuk Amar Laila Taib and state ministers were among those present.

Prince Albert toured the Mulu National Park and launched the Mulu Batcam in the Deer Cave during his visit there yesterday.

Taib said the state government had dedicated 6.5 million hectares as permanent forest, and another two million hectares as national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and water catchments.
In the cities and towns, he said the authorities had preserved areas as green lungs.

In his speech, Prince Albert commended Sarawak for its commitment to preserve and conserve nature.

“In Monaco, we also share this obligation to protect the planet so that the children of tomorrow can live in a protected environment,” he added.

Berawans' Struggle in Mulu Paradise Continues

Maybe we should boycott Royal Mulu Resort. The next time you visit Mulu National Park, please stay at the National Park instead.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008
By Willie Kajan
2008-04-10

Fighting an increasingly difficult battle, the Berawan struggle on in defense of native customary rights to their ancestral land that has now been alienated for development of the tourism industry. For the past few years, the community leaders have been trying to address the issue with the authority but nothing has come into effect.

In year 1993, the Sarawak Government intensified its publicity campaign against this group of indigenous people. The state ministers and their deputies openly criticized the Berawan as greedy people and refused to meet them. They claimed that the development of the tourism industry in Mulu is for the benefit of the people and the state.

The Chief Minister of Sarawak Abdul Taib Mahmud was quoted by the newspapers as saying that the state government will not hold any meeting with the Berawan. He stated that the Berawan do not have any proof of their Native Customary Right claim to the land in Mulu and the government is not going to entertain these greedy people.

Judging from the official statistics, it could not be disputed that tourism sector has fast becoming a main foreign revenue earner to the country. However, we have doubts with the real gains considering that in this case of the Royal Mulu Resort, the indigenous communities are victimized and exploited.

The Superintendent of Land and Survey approached the landowner Tama Lian Mallang, who has ancestral land rights, in 1975. The Superintendent told him that the government wanted to acquire his land for the building of the Mulu National Park Headquarters. When his land was surveyed, it was 19.9 acres. The Superintendent informed him that the value per acre was RM80.00 and the authority took 3 years to award the compensation to the landowner.
Instead of building the Mulu National Park headquarters, the authority alienated this pieces of land to private company to build the Royal Mulu Resort costing RM60 million in 1991. The Royal Mulu Resort started operating at the beginning of year 1993.

Our investigations further revealed that it is the Chief Minister of Sarawak Abdul Taib Mahmud’s family that will benefit more from this tourist resort project.

This company was given a provisional land lease on May 13th 1993 to an area measuring approximately 243 acres for the proposed second phrase of the Royal Mulu Resort and other property development purposes by the state Land and Survey Department. The name of the company is Borsarmulu Resort Sendirian Berhad (Sdn. Bhd. means Private Limited Company).
More