Tag: Environment

Environment

An eyesore that is a pot of gold

Sabah Insights

Poor Sembulan Tengah villagers stand to be millionaires overnight

Dilapidated wooden stilt houses at Sembulan Tengah water village.

To say that Sembulan Tengah is an eyesore is an understatement. The 42-acre (17-hectare) water village whose history dates back to the early 20th century with the setting up of an ethnic Chinese fishing settlement has become not just an obnoxious rubbish dump but a shelter for illegal immigrants and criminals. Yet about 3,000 of the villagers, who are mostly locals, are defying eviction. Their 200 wooden stilt houses surrounded by high-rise buildings which include luxurious hotels, shopping malls, shops and offices, are standing on a pot of gold in the heart of Kota Kinabalu. Land here fetches a premium. And the villagers are looking forward anxiously to another meeting with the Kota Kinabalu mayor on October 8 to resolve the problem. The first one ended without a definitive solution on September 21 but with City Hall and the Lands and Surveys Department saying that the villagers would not be evicted for now.

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Environment

A mindboggling river pollution crisis

Sabah Insights

Sabah’s tough environment and water resources laws are impotent against polluters

Sabah’s once pristine rivers are so badly polluted that fish and other aquatic life have declined so drastically that the indigenous Muruts who live in remote Pensiangan in the interior of the state no longer go fishing. There are just no fish to catch. Christina Liew, the state tourism, environment and culture minister, acknowledges that river pollution has reached a critical stage; but she is silent on why her Environment Protection Department which has sweeping police powers fails to arrest the problem. Instead she expects participants at a one-day river management workshop in Kota Kinabalu last week to come out with urgent solutions “to develop a clear and comprehensive roadmap for managing rivers in Sabah”

Flood in the industrial area of Kolombong in Kota Kinabalu state capital.

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