The Iban community is the dominant group occupying the Central Region, followed by the Chinese and the Melanau.
BAT 5’s main objective has been to focus on riverine towns and settlements from where we also detoured to other major towns and settlements to follow up on pertinent issues which we had taken up as part of our mission.
We set out on June 22 from Kuching’s Sim Kheng Hong Port on Bahagia No. 8 express boat which took us to our first destination – Tanjung Manis.
It is a budding township that still requires more time and efforts to be nurtured in order to give an impactful and lasting change to realise Sarawak’s vision to be an industrialised state, especially through the mammoth SCORE project.
From there, we moved on to Sarikei which is considered as the ‘Food Basket’ of Sarawak.
It was there that we paid a courtesy call on its Resident, Dahim Nadot, on how the division planned to achieve its objectives in the near future.
“What we need is a road link from both Sarikei and Bintangor to Sibu-Tanjung Manis Road so that the food products from Sarikei Division can be marketed to international destinations in the near future, hopefully by 2020,” said Dahim.
Tanjung Manis as a Halal hub cannot be underestimated as it is envisioned to be the biggest of its kind in the world.
“With proper linkages and greater mobility in the near future, Tanjung Manis, which lies within SCORE, is set to be the biggest Halal hub in the world,” declared Datu Len Talif Salleh, the Assistant Minister in the Chief Minister’s Office (Promotion of Technical Education).
When there is road connectivity, water transport will become a sunset industry. However, due to the huge size of Sarawak, water transport is still needed to get from one place to another.
The Balleh Bridge under construction.
With the government trying to connect all the missing links, roads will eventually replace water transport along the mighty Rajang.
Notwithstanding any shortcomings, Tanjung Manis should be on its way to greater industrialisation in the near future as it is now well connected to Mukah, which is the ‘capital’ of SCORE.
“We are slowly taking off as an industrialised region in the state with major projects that have been implemented here; especially technical colleges to prepare the necessary manpower needed for SCORE projects to take off.
“It’s just like building Lego. It will take time and we have been putting the entire infrastructure into place such as the new Mukah Airport, new water treatment plant, power supply and commercial centres, road connectivity, to accommodate the needs of Mukah in future.
“And when Mukah is successful as an industrialised centre, it will also benefit the entire SCORE region including other major towns such as Sibu, Kapit, Sarikei, Tanjung Manis and Bintulu.
“Even smaller towns such as Belaga and Long Lama in Baram will also benefit from the SCORE spinoff projects,” said Regional Corridor of Development Authority (Recoda) chief executive officer Tan Sri Datuk Amar Wilson Baya Dandot. Recoda is the authority which implements the SCORE projects.
And although Mukah has been earmarked as the capital of SCORE, Sibu, which is a major town in the central region, still plays a vital role as a commercial and regional hub as major banking, education and transportation businesses still used it as their headquarters to serve the entire region.
Minister of Local Government and Community Development Dato Sri Wong Soon Koh believes Sibu will have a much greater role to play when SCORE projects are fully realised in future.
And as far as Kapit is concerned, Land Development Minister Tan Sri Datuk Amar Dr James Jemut Masing said it will be the main power supplier for SCORE projects as it housed two major HEP dams such as Bakun and Murum and in the near future the Balleh HEP.
While we have travelled far and wide in the central region, we did not reach our intended destinations of Belaga and Bakun due to the current low water level, which prevented express boats from going upstream just a day after we had reached Kapit.
Even though this roller coaster journey has been long and winding and that our bodies and minds are drained it was definitely an adventure worth taking.
The people we met, the history we learned, the culture we experienced and the food we sampled during the 17-day journey has given us meaningful and enriching lifetime experience.
The many tiny towns we visited were secluded, hidden behind the shadows of the dense tropical forest, while some inaccessible when the sun set beyond the horizon.
For city folks who rarely experienced the hardship and isolation being confined in remoteness, this adventure has been eye-opening and insightful.
With our discovery, we will now look at our home with a new set of eyes.