The focus of each district was to get the people fully involved in income generating projects, big and small. If it was rice, improve the method of rice production from the planting to threshing, to marketing; if it was fruit growing, concentrate on the varieties which had a ready market and produce those in sufficient quantities — mangoes, durians, mangosteen, guava and duku; if it was vegetables or flowers, they must be fresh enough for export to Singapore. The idea was to create an economically viable community everywhere, especially for those who were not being resettled in Felda’s schemes.
Sarawak’s version of the Red Book
Our version of the Red Book was the creation of district action committees.
Each district maintained an operations room where all projects in the district were displayed and implemented by the various departments. Regular meetings were held to discuss reports from various implementing agencies in that district. At such meetings, even the police sent their representative to brief the meeting about crime, if any.
A representative from the medical and health department would report on the state of health of the people, warning of an outbreak of an infectious disease and advising on the precautionary measures to take. Everyone who attended the meeting would warn everybody at home and in the bazaar.
Later, representatives from other agencies like Mara and other statutory bodies were invited to take part in the deliberations of the committees. It was fun to listen to the knowledgeable views of the attendees and learning how affairs at district level were being run.
Another set of committees was also set up at the divisional level and at the apex was the state development committee — the mother of all committees.
Comprehensive plan
A couple of local politicians have described the Rural Development Plan as being the most comprehensive of all plans hitherto produced. Before details are available to curious people like me, may we know whether or not water supply projects in the rural and coastal areas are part of the deal?
Of the allocation of RM3.3 billion for water and electricity under Budget 2011, how much is for water supply projects, repeat, in the rural and coastal areas of Sarawak?
Is rain harvesting in the pipeline?
If we can provide funds for the construction of the 100-storey Warisan Merdeka, costing RM5 billion, surely we can provide a fraction of that sum for water supply projects in Sarawak. If by 2020, most of these water woes will have been solved, then we will be happy to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of the formation of Malaysia in style.
We are a people who waste a lot of water every day. People in towns spend very little on treated water for washing cars and watering the garden, those in the rural areas drink it untreated and bathe in polluted rivers. Yet others rely entirely on rainwater for all purposes.
Financial constraints have been cited for the slow pace of providing these facilities to such areas of Sarawak, but when news about billions of ringgit being allocated for mega projects was leaked to the media, parched villagers and longhouse dwellers cannot help but feel marginalised on the side stream of development.
Calling on investors
Where are our inventors?
What are those people in the university of science or in the university of technology doing about rain harvesting?
Yes, rain harvesting!
Is it so difficult to produce technology to harvest rain in situ, store, treat, and distribute it to the houses and schools in need of water?
While the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation has a plan to send another astronaut into outer space in three years’ time, with money disappearing into thin air, can’t we solve the water woes on earth at Dalat or Oya first?
Then we can heartily endorse the slogan ‘People First, Performance Now’.