The damage and suffering caused by log jams in Sarawak rivers is monumental and yet totally preventable because they are caused by up river logging that has not been properly managed or safely cleared.
No one is unaware of the risk and danger created by logging in river basin areas and standard precautions are considered basic practice for any licensing body to demand of licencees.
Given the consequences, any negligence in carrying them out ought to result in massive fines at the very least for companies who have failed to carry out proper due diligence and right practices.
Except in Sarawak the failures are happening time and again with no apparent enforcement against the crony timber firms who donate to. the ruling party and its election campaigns.
Log Jam Heading Towards Murum Dam
It is therefore with a sense of weary deja vu that one hears this week of a new major log jam that has accumulated in the waters above the critical Murum Dam and river that eventually feeds into the mighty Rajang River.
At the time of the construction of this controversial structure that sits perilously up-river of the giant Bakun Dam itself, Sarawak Report exposed the concerns voiced by the Australian consultancy Hydro-Tasmania owing to this very issue of dangerous logging practices.
Of course, the primary purpose behind the dam, which had been developed secretly in the remote jungle, was to justify the logging of this remaining area of virgin forest by the crony company Shin Yang.
The former Project Director, Hydro-Tasmania engineer Andrew Pattle, has been recorded saying that the inability to stop dangerous logging practices had made the Murum Dam a “high risk project” that would suffer from sedimentation build up and its consequences.
Over the past few days an even worse scenario has been reported after cloudbursts flushed out tons of hidden uncleared debris that has slid down the decimated slopes and into the river above the dam, according to angry local community leaders who have reported the situation to Radio Free Sarawak.
According to Peter Ero, a Resident of Uma Badeng Bakun Resettlement Scheme, a severe Log Jam has built up at Sungai Belepeh and Sungai Linau along the Danum river upstream of Murum. He knows why it happened and asks a very good question:
This happens due to logging waste and wood waste that is not properly disposed of during the dam’s impoundment process. It’s strange that logging companies produce pollution, yet the government has to spend money for the clean-up. Why did the forest department, SFC or Sarawak environment ministry not take action to prosecute these environmental criminals? Is it because they are GPS cronies?
Indeed. Another caller who did not wish to be identified complained that Shin Yang Timber Company still operates upstream, along with two oil palm plantation companies, Adam Estate and Semalong Estate, all of which he claimed are causing debris.
The programme and its callers pointed out that their problems in Danum and Murum follow a familiar pattern of separate incidents caused elsewhere but for the same reasons across the region, mirroring similar recent occurrences in the Belepeh and Linau rivers in Bakun.
They complained that the extensive dumping of hundreds of thousands of tons of wood has created substantial difficulties for the local communities, particularly fishermen who struggle to catch fish. Navigating through the log-covered areas can take at least two hours, severely hampering their movement and daily activities.
It is a matter that Murum residents have complained to the local assemblyman about for several years, they said, yet no clean-up efforts have been undertaken. There is growing frustration and suspicion among the community regarding the lack of action by the Forest Department and the Sarawak Forestry Corporation (SFC) against the logging and oil palm plantation companies responsible for the severe environmental pollution.
“There is speculation that Shin Yang’s wealth and connections with the GPS minister may be a factor in the inaction” the programme reports. You bet!
The point about shifting the burden of the clean up operation (before these jams become deadly torpedoes bearing down on the dams downstream and the vast lakes beneath) from the public purse to the billionaire timber companies, which are responsible through their negligence, is absolutely central to this matter.
Murum and Bakun voters should consider the situation and their own logic when they cast their votes.
Peter Ero told RFS listeners that in Bakun, there was previously a company appointed to clean the log jams, receiving a monthly payment of RM2 million. However, he expressed concerns over the inefficiency of the log jam cleaning contract, stating that the work is often incomplete despite the enormous public payments being made.
Unless GPS investigates these terrifying and dangerous incidents with the severity they deserve, deter those responsible with appropriate fines, and indeed the removal of their timber licences, local people can conclude this government cares not a jot about them but only about the huge ‘donations’ that flow back into their party from these concessions and indeed all licences currently benefitting from GPS patronage in Sarawak.
To then pour in public money into a so-called clearance operation without ensuring a proper job is done is to add insult by the crony GPS contractors to the injury already done by the crony GPS timber barons.
Why vote for GPS?