Author: Sabah Insights

Sabah Insights is an online news site that offers authoritative analysis, insight and opinion on politics, government, business, finance, health, culture, entertainment, sports and recreation. It does not just give you the news, but it explains events behind it. Whether you are a government or corporate leader or just the man-in-the-street, you will find these insights important for your decisions.
Tourism

Sabah Hospitality Fiesta mirrors ATI College’s success

Sabah Insights

How one man builds a premier tourism school out of nowhere.

Wong Khen Thau

There was all round scepticism when Wong Khen Thau started Sabah’s first hospitality and tourism school in Kota Kinabalu 27 years ago. The hotel industry didn’t give him a chance to succeed because it thought that he was copying what hotels were already doing: on the job training of their frontline staff. Hoteliers didn’t think that he was offering anything new to the industry. And they were quite right to doubt him because Wong knew little about hotel and catering. He was a school teacher who had turned himself into a businessman selling home appliances. But all was not lost. His Asian Tourism Institute, staffed by a handful of hotel industry experts, received its first batch of 40 students for a six-month certificate course in food and beverage, housekeeping and front office operations – thanks to the sponsorship of then tourism minister Bernard Dompok. And from that small beginning, the Asian Tourism International College, as it is now known, has become the premier tourism and hotel and catering school which has produced more than 12,000 skilled workers for Sabah’s hotel industry, according to Mabel Cheong, the college’s registrar.

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Society

A merrier month of December

Sabah Insights

Sabah cultural extravaganza stresses that Malaysia is a secular nation

The Bajau Suluk culture will be on display at the Dec Cover Sabah extravaganza.

The merry month of December is getting merrier. And the calendar looks crowded towards the end of the year. Adding to the Christmas spirit and ushering in the new year are cultural events lined up for the inaugural cultural and touristic extravaganza called Dec-Cover Sabah 2023. It showcases the state’s cultural diversity and drives home the point that Malaysia is a secular country.

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Tourism

More than just a fun run through the rainforest

Sabah Insights

Why Tawau Hills Park must be protected at all cost

A waterfall of the Tawau Hills Park

“The Tawau Hills Park is not merely a backdrop for a run,” said Alesia Sion, deputy permanent secretary of the tourism, culture and environment ministry, at the Tropical Rainforest Run on November 26. “It is a sanctuary that deserves our utmost care and protection.” Indeed. The only reason that the 280-square-km park was set up in 1979 was to protect its water catchment from loggers. They had tried to chop down valuable tropical hardwood trees in one of the last remaining lowland virgin forests where some of the world’s tallest trees stand to almost 100 metres tall. Yet temptation reigns supreme. But state officials are banking on sports tourism to keep it in check.

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Health

A not so rosy picture of cancer care

Sabah Insights

Prohibitive costs deny patients of the best treatment

Dr Ros Suzanna Ahmad Bustaman

The mention of cancer invariably conjures up a death sentence. It is Sabah’s fourth leading cause of death. Every year about 1,200 people die of it while about 1,400 new cases are reported. Oncologists (cancer specialists) however say many of these deaths could have been prevented as many cancers are treatable, if not curable, if only they were discovered early. And the latest drugs and state-of-the-art equipment can help patients with advance stage of the disease survive. Top health officials tried hard last month in Kota Kinabalu to paint a rosy picture of Sabah’s cancer care at the 34th Annual Scientific Congress of the Malaysian Oncological Society (Ascomos). Reality however speaks otherwise.

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Tourism

Rainforest run returns with a vengeance

Sabah Insights

Tourism minister wants it to be held yearly

Tropical rainforest run returns to Tawau.

Sabah’s inaugural tropical rainforest run got off to a promising start four years ago in the eastcoast timber town of Tawau. It attracted 230 runners. Six came from Kenya and nine from Indonesia. But three months later the Covid-19 outbreak scuttled all its future plans. The pandemic is over. And the run is returning to the Tawau Hills Park on November 26 with a field of 250 runners who include participants from Kenya, Australia, Canada, Japan, Indonesia, and Singapore.

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Business

The rice fiasco

Sabah Insights

As prices skyrocket, Sabah aims to end Bernas’ rice monopoly

Paddy fields are few and far between.

Rice isn’t only a staple of Sabah’s indigenous Kadazandusuns. It is sacred to them. Legends have it that its Bambarayon spirit has given them a lifeline. So in a sense, they should be self-sufficient in rice. A Kadazandusun family would have a paddy field and be confident of a good harvest that would give them rice to last for at least a year or until the next harvest. Surplus rice would be stockpiled or given to those who didn’t have any. Not anymore. Paddy acreage and rice production have shrunk so drastically that Sabah has to import almost all of its consumption.

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Politics

Anwar trips on Sabah

Sabah Insights

Will the Borneo state ever get what the federal government owes it

It was painful to watch prime minister Anwar Ibrahim struggling to explain why Sabah and Sarawak are getting the lion’s share of federal money for development in next year’s budget. And perhaps for the first time, Mr Anwar alluded to his government’s financial obligation to the east Malaysian Borneo states under the Malaysia Agreement of 1963. Famously known as MA63, it sets out terms for their membership, safeguards, special privileges and autonomy in the 13-state Malaysian federation. These have already been written into the federal constitution. Yet Mr Anwar stumbled while answering questions in parliament on November 2 in a feeble attempt to pacify peninsular critics that his government is giving too much attention to east Malaysia. What has been left unsaid is the hundreds of billions of ringgit, not to mention earnings from oil and gas, that Putra Jaya has profited from Sabah and Sarawak.

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Wildlife

Rare Kinabalu Birdwing struggles for survival

Sabah Insights

Sabah’s newly named state butterfly is threatened by a double whammy

Kinabalu Birdwing

Despite its discovery 131 years ago, little is known of the rare and mysterious Kinabalu or Borneo Birdwing butterfly (Troides Andromache) which is struggling for survival. Its population is not known. But there may be about 5,000 of them left in the foothills of Mount Kinabalu, Malaysia’s tallest at 4,095 metres, according to Stephen Sutton, 85, a British entomologist. He has been at the fore front of the butterfly research project supported by the Kota Kinabalu Rotary Club that started six years ago and culminated in the Sabah government naming the giant birdwing its state butterfly on October 2. It is a belated attempt to save it from extinction. Wildlife officials say many of them have been wiped out by deforestation. But the butterfly now faces a new threat – climate change.

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Culture

A regatta overshadows the unending plight of Sabah’s boat people

Sabah Insights

Idyllic Semporna cashes in on the culture of stateless sea gypsies

A Bajau Laut beauty at the Regatta Lepa

For 28 years Sabah has held the annual Regatta Lepa, a culturally colourful boat race of the Bajau Laut, the sea gypsies or nomads. They hailed from the Southern Philippines but have made the waters off the idyllic resort town of Semporna their home. Next month the regatta will be held from 17 to 19. And as Sabah cashes in on their culture, the Bajau Laut are resigned to their plight of a stateless people. Meanwhile local authorities are tasked to clean up the town, ensure that there’s enough water supply, no power cuts and enough rooms for about 50,000 visitors.

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