Chief Minister Tan Sri Adenan Satem has told six major timber corporations in Sarawak to account for every log they fell from their concession areas. “The state government will issue a circular to timber licence holders, including the six, on the steps they must follow,” he said at the launch of the state-level World Forestry Day at the State Legislative Assembly here today.
He said every tree and log the firms cut must be accounted for to facilitate checking by the Forestry Department’s enforcement officers. He told the bosses of the “Big Six” firms to keep watch over their contractors, subcontractors and workers, and to make sure they do not log outside their concession areas.
“Sack them if they go outside the areas,” he told the company heads who were seated at the front row during the event. The six major timber companies include KTS Holdings Sdn Bhd, RH Forest Corporation Sdn Bhd, Samling Group, Shin Yang Group, Tan Ann Group, and WTK Holdings Bhd. The concessionaires own hundreds of thousands of hectares of land for logging in Sarawak.
It seems that new Sarawak CM, Adenan, has noticed that he has to face the electorate of the State this year or early next and has turned to electioneering! Having failed miserably to persuade KL to part with more than 5% of the State’s oil revenues he now calls for log counting!
Perhaps he does not know that the totally disregarded law of Sarawak already provides for this and that the State funds an almost entirely moribund Forest Depatrment to oversee those laws? Or does he mean that, at an unspecified future date, he will make them do what they are paid to do. By paid one means of course their official salaries. The other now comes naturally and as a matter of course.
And what about the millions upon millions of logs that were not counted but just exported to enrich ex CM Taib and his cronies? No back dated penalties or fines for them? No mention of this of course in Adenan’s boasting. One knows birds by their feathers and the proverb “birds of a feather flock together” applies here.
When judging Adenan’s public statements one should always remember that he is CM because Taib named him for the job.