Bakun dam to be much worse than PKFZ scandal

Kua Kia Soong | Sep 22, 09

N EARLY 50 years after independence

for Sarawak, we see a comparison
with the 'Highland Clearances' in
Scotland during the 18th century when the
highlanders were driven off their lands for
capitalistic sheep farming.

The English did it with brutality and thoroughness

through “butcher” Lord Cumberland and even
obliterated the 'wild' Celtic mode of life.

What we have seen in Sarawak recently has the

same capitalist logic, namely, to drive the
indigenous peoples out of their native customary the Sungai Asap camp had already been given out
lands so that these lands can be exploited for their to a multinational company. After all, the whole
commercial value and the indigenous people can Bakun area, which is the size of the island of
be “freed” to become wage labourers. Singapore and home to the indigenous peoples,
had already been thoroughly logged...
Thus, even though the accursed Bakun dam had
been suspended in 1997 due to the financial crisis, All this happened while Dr Mahathir Mahathir was
the government still went ahead to displace the prime minister. Wasn't he a liability to the BN
10,000 indigenous peoples to the Sungai Asap government then?
resettlement camp in 1998.
I was part of the fact-finding mission to Sungai
Well, there is a reason for this - the contract for Asap in 1999 and even then we could see the

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destruction of so many unique indigenous anything to go by, the leaks and non-
communities and their cultures, including the Ukit accountability all along the line will result in
tribe. Malaysian taxpayers paying billions for the same
kind of daylight robbery.
There was only one word to describe what had
been done to these indigenous peoples and their In the early 90s, when the government was trying
centuries-old cultures... wicked! to assure us that there would be no irresponsible
logging in Sarawak, I pointed out in Parliament
Banned from my own country that if the government could not monitor the
Bukit Sungai Putih permanent forest and wildlife
As a result of my concern for the indigenous reserve just 10 minutes from Kuala Lumpur, how
peoples and the natural resources of Sarawak, I did they expect us to believe they could monitor
was told at Kuching airport in August 2007 that I the forests in Bakun?
could not enter Sarawak. So much for 1Malaysia!
So much for national integration! So much for
nearly 50 years of independence! I was not even
welcome in my own country.

But the contracts for the resettlement scheme

and the logging are chicken feed compared to the Likewise today, if the government cannot monitor
mega-bucks to be reaped from the mega-dams. a project in Port Klang just half an hour from Kuala
Even before the Bakun dam ever got started, Lumpur, how can they assure us that they can
Malaysian taxpayers had to compensate dam monitor a project deep in upriver Sarawak and
builder Ekran Bhd and the other “stakeholders” through 650km of the South China Sea?
close to RM1 billion in 1997.
How can we be assured that we will get to the
How much does it cost to pay our 'mata-mata' bottom of politically-linked scandals when the
(police) to investigate the alleged scandalous rape Sarawak police tell us they don't have the
of our Penan women? resources to investigate the rape of Penan women
and girls?
The contracts from building the Bakun dam and
the undersea cable run in excess of RM20 billion. How can we be assured that the Sarawak state
Malaysian taxpayers won't know the final cost government cares about its indigenous peoples
until they are told the cost overruns when the and its natural resources when NGO activists are
projects have been completed. banned from entering Sarawak to investigate a
part of their own country?
But if the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) scandal is

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It makes no economic sense The undersea cable was again part of the project.
There was also a plan for an aluminum plant, a
pulp and paper plant, the world's biggest steel
plant and a high-tension and high-voltage wire
industry.

Have feasibility studies been done to see if there

will be adequate local, regional and international
demand for all these products?

Six years later, after the economy was battered by

the Asian Financial Crisis, the government again
announced that the project would be resumed
albeit on a smaller scale of 500MW capacity.
In 1980, the Bakun dam was proposed with a
power generating capacity of 2,400MW even
Before long in 2001, the 2,400MW scale was once
though the projected energy needs for the whole
again proposed although the submarine cable had
of Sarawak was only 200MW for 1990.
been shelved. Today we read reports about the
government and companies still contemplating
The project was thus coupled with the proposal to
this hare-brained undersea scheme which is now
build the world's longest (650km) undersea cable
estimated to cost a whopping RM21 billion!
to transmit electricity to the peninsula. An
aluminum smelter at Sarawak's coastal town of
Bintulu was also proposed to take up the surplus More mega-dams to be built
energy.
The recent announcement that the Sarawak
In 1986, the project was abandoned because of government intends to build two more mega-
the economic recession although the then PM
Mahathir announced just before the UN
Conference on Environment and Development
(Earth Summit) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil that this
was “proof of Malaysia's commitment to the
environment”.

So what happened to that commitment,

Mahathir?

In 1993, with the upturn in the Malaysian

economy, the government once again announced dams in Sarawak apart from the ill-fated Bakun
the revival of the Bakun dam project. To cushion dam is cause for grave concern.
the expected protests, then Energy Minister S
Samy Vellu gave Parliament a poetic description of Malaysian taxpayers, Malaysian forests and
a “series of cascading dams” and not one large Malaysian indigenous peoples will again be the
dam as had been originally proposed. main victims of this misconceived plan. We have
been told that some 1,000 more indigenous
Before long, it was announced that the Bakun peoples will have to be displaced from their
dam would be a massive 205-metre high concrete ancestral lands to make way for these two dams.
face rockfill dam - one of the highest dams of its
kind in the world - and it would flood an area the Apart from the human cost, ultimately it will be
size of Singapore island. the Malaysian consumers who pay for this
expensive figment of Sarawak Chief Minister

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Abdul Taib Mahmud's wild imagination. Indeed, (CMS) Bhd Group, a conglomerate controlled by
enough taxpayers' money has been wasted - Taib's family business interest?
Sarawak Hidro has already spent some RM1.5
billion on the Bakun dam project. Sarawak's tin-pot government
Right now, the country is being fed conflicting Clearly, Bakun energy and Sarawak's tin-pot
reports about energy demand. There is supposed governance do not give confidence to investors.
to be a 43 percent oversupply of electricity First it was Alcoa, and then Rio Tinto - both giant
capacity in peninsula Malaysia. Experienced Bakun mining multinationals - had expressed second
dam watchers will tell you such conflicting and thoughts about investing in Sarawak.
mutually contradictory assertions have been used
by the dam proponents to justify every flip flop of Concerned NGOs have all along called for the
this misconceived project. abandonment of this monstrous Bakun dam
project because it is economically ill-conceived,
Apart from the economic cost and the wastage, socially disruptive and environmentally disastrous.
how are investors supposed to plan for the long-
term and medium term? What is the long-term The environmental destruction is evident many
plan for Bakun? Can Bakun compete with the rest miles downstream since the whole Bakun area has
of the world or for that matter, Indonesia? been logged by those who have already been paid
by Sarawak Hidro.
The suggestion for aluminum smelters to take up
the bulk of Bakun electricity have been mentioned The social atrophy among the 10,000 displaced
ever since the conception of the Bakun dam indigenous peoples at Sungai Asap resettlement
project because they are such a voracious scheme remains the wicked testimony of the
consumer of energy. Even so, has there ever been Mahathir/Taib era. The empty promises and
any proper assessment of the market viability of damned lives of the displaced peoples as
forewarned by NGOs in 1999 have now been
borne out.

The economic viability of the Bakun dam project

has been in doubt from the beginning and the
announcement to build two more dams merely
reflects a cavalier disregard for the indigenous
peoples, more desecration of Sarawak's natural
resources and a blatant affront to sustainable
development.

When will Malaysians ever learn?

such a project with the cheaper operating costs in
Dr KUA KIA SOONG is director of Suaram. He was member of
China? parliament for Petaling Jaya from 1990 to 1995.

Does it matter that the co-owner of one of the © 2009 Mkini Dotcom Sdn Bhd.
smelters is none other than Cahaya Mata Sarawak http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/113340

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