Bakun Dam to Be Much Worse Than PKFZ

8/14/2019 Bakun Dam to Be Much Worse Than PKFZ

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Bakun dam to be much worse than PKFZ scandal

Kua Kia Soong | Sep 22, 09

EARLY 50 years after independencefor Sarawak, we see a comparison

with the 'Highland Clearances' inScotland during the 18th century when thehighlanders were driven off their lands forcapitalistic sheep farming.

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The English did it with brutality and thoroughnessthrough butcher Lord Cumberland and evenobliterated the 'wild' Celtic mode of life.

What we have seen in Sarawak recently has the

same capitalist logic, namely, to drive theindigenous peoples out of their native customarylands so that these lands can be exploited for theircommercial value and the indigenous people canbe freed to become wage labourers.

Thus, even though the accursed Bakun dam hadbeen suspended in 1997 due to the financial crisis,the government still went ahead to displace10,000 indigenous peoples to the Sungai Asapresettlement camp in 1998.

Well, there is a reason for this - the contract for

the Sungai Asap camp had already been given outto a multinational company. After all, the wholeBakun area, which is the size of the island ofSingapore and home to the indigenous peoples,had already been thoroughly logged...

All this happened while Dr Mahathir Mahathir wasthe prime minister. Wasn't he a liability to the BNgovernment then?

I was part of the fact-finding mission to SungaiAsap in 1999 and even then we could see the

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destruction of so many unique indigenouscommunities and their cultures, including the Ukittribe.

There was only one word to describe what hadbeen done to these indigenous peoples and theircenturies-old cultures... wicked!

Banned from my own country

As a result of my concern for the indigenouspeoples and the natural resources of Sarawak, Iwas told at Kuching airport in August 2007 that Icould not enter Sarawak. So much for 1Malaysia!So much for national integration! So much fornearly 50 years of independence! I was not evenwelcome in my own country.

But the contracts for the resettlement schemeand the logging are chicken feed compared to themega-bucks to be reaped from the mega-dams.Even before the Bakun dam ever got started,Malaysian taxpayers had to compensate dambuilder Ekran Bhd and the other stakeholdersclose to RM1 billion in 1997.

How much does it cost to pay our 'mata-mata'(police) to investigate the alleged scandalous rapeof our Penan women?

The contracts from building the Bakun dam andthe undersea cable run in excess of RM20 billion.Malaysian taxpayers won't know the final costuntil they are told the cost overruns when theprojects have been completed.

But if the Port Klang Free Zone (PKFZ) scandal is

anything to go by, the leaks and non-accountability all along the line will result inMalaysian taxpayers paying billions for the samekind of daylight robbery.

In the early 90s, when the government was tryingto assure us that there would be no irresponsible

logging in Sarawak, I pointed out in Parliamentthat if the government could not monitor theBukit Sungai Putih permanent forest and wildlifereserve just 10 minutes from Kuala Lumpur, howdid they expect us to believe they could monitorthe forests in Bakun?

Likewise today, if the government cannot monitora project in Port Klang just half an hour from KualaLumpur, how can they assure us that they canmonitor a project deep in upriver Sarawak andthrough 650km of the South China Sea?

How can we be assured that we will get to thebottom of politically-linked scandals when theSarawak police tell us they don't have theresources to investigate the rape of Penan womenand girls?

How can we be assured that the Sarawak stategovernment cares about its indigenous peoplesand its natural resources when NGO activists arebanned from entering Sarawak to investigate apart of their own country?



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It makes no economic sense

In 1980, the Bakun dam was proposed with apower generating capacity of 2,400MW eventhough the projected energy needs for the wholeof Sarawak was only 200MW for 1990.

The project was thus coupled with the proposal tobuild the world's longest (650km) undersea cableto transmit electricity to the peninsula. Analuminum smelter at Sarawak's coastal town ofBintulu was also proposed to take up the surplusenergy.

In 1986, the project was abandoned because ofthe economic recession although the then PM

Mahathir announced just before the UNConference on Environment and Development(Earth Summit) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil that thiswas proof of Malaysia's commitment to theenvironment.

So what happened to that commitment,Mahathir?

In 1993, with the upturn in the Malaysian

economy, the government once again announcedthe revival of the Bakun dam project. To cushionthe expected protests, then Energy Minister SSamy Vellu gave Parliament a poetic description ofa series of cascading dams and not one largedam as had been originally proposed.

Before long, it was announced that the Bakundam would be a massive 205-metre high concreteface rockfill dam - one of the highest dams of its

kind in the world - and it would flood an area thesize of Singapore island.

The undersea cable was again part of the project.There was also a plan for an aluminum plant, apulp and paper plant, the world's biggest steelplant and a high-tension and high-voltage wireindustry.

Have feasibility studies been done to see if there

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

Six years later, after the economy was battered bythe Asian Financial Crisis, the government againannounced that the project would be resumedalbeit on a smaller scale of 500MW capacity.

Before long in 2001, the 2,400MW scale was onceagain proposed although the submarine cable had

been shelved. Today we read reports about thegovernment and companies still contemplatingthis hare-brained undersea scheme which is nowestimated to cost a whopping RM21 billion!

More mega-dams to be built

The recent announcement that the Sarawakgovernment intends to build two more mega-

dams in Sarawak apart from the ill-fated Bakundam is cause for grave concern.

Malaysian taxpayers, Malaysian forests andMalaysian indigenous peoples will again be themain victims of this misconceived plan. We havebeen told that some 1,000 more indigenouspeoples will have to be displaced from theirancestral lands to make way for these two dams.

Apart from the human cost, ultimately it will bethe Malaysian consumers who pay for thisexpensive figment of Sarawak Chief Minister



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Abdul Taib Mahmud's wild imagination. Indeed,enough taxpayers' money has been wasted -Sarawak Hidro has already spent some RM1.5billion on the Bakun dam project.

Right now, the country is being fed conflictingreports about energy demand. There is supposed

to be a 43 percent oversupply of electricitycapacity in peninsula Malaysia. Experienced Bakundam watchers will tell you such conflicting andmutually contradictory assertions have been usedby the dam proponents to justify every flip flop ofthis misconceived project.

Apart from the economic cost and the wastage,how are investors supposed to plan for the long-term and medium term? What is the long-term

plan for Bakun? Can Bakun compete with the restof the world or for that matter, Indonesia?

The suggestion for aluminum smelters to take upthe bulk of Bakun electricity have been mentionedever since the conception of the Bakun damproject because they are such a voraciousconsumer of energy. Even so, has there ever beenany proper assessment of the market viability of

such a project with the cheaper operating costs inChina?

Does it matter that the co-owner of one of thesmelters is none other than Cahaya Mata Sarawak

(CMS) Bhd Group, a conglomerate controlled byTaib's family business interest?

Sarawak's tin-pot government

Clearly, Bakun energy and Sarawak's tin-potgovernance do not give confidence to investors.

First it was Alcoa, and then Rio Tinto - both giantmining multinationals - had expressed secondthoughts about investing in Sarawak.

Concerned NGOs have all along called for theabandonment of this monstrous Bakun damproject because it is economically ill-conceived,socially disruptive and environmentally disastrous.

The environmental destruction is evident many

miles downstream since the whole Bakun area hasbeen logged by those who have already been paidby Sarawak Hidro.

The social atrophy among the 10,000 displacedindigenous peoples at Sungai Asap resettlementscheme remains the wicked testimony of theMahathir/Taib era. The empty promises anddamned lives of the displaced peoples asforewarned by NGOs in 1999 have now been

borne out.

The economic viability of the Bakun dam projecthas been in doubt from the beginning and theannouncement to build two more dams merelyreflects a cavalier disregard for the indigenouspeoples, more desecration of Sarawak's naturalresources and a blatant affront to sustainabledevelopment.

When will Malaysians ever learn?

Dr KUA KIA SOONG is director of Suaram. He was member of

parliament for Petaling Jaya from 1990 to 1995.

2009 Mkini Dotcom Sdn Bhd.http://www.malaysiakini.com/news/113340


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Bakun Dam to Be Much Worse Than PKFZ