SAND DREDGING, OPEN TO ALL

VIDEOKLIP SANDMAN

SABAH Progressive Party (SAPP) on Tuesday asked the State Government, particularly Land and Survey Department, to stop coming up with excuses over the issue of sand dredging monopoly in the State.

Instead, it want the exclusive right given to the Sabah Economic Development Corporation (Sedco) to manage the State’s river sand extraction to be cancelled and let it be opened for all.

The party’s Information Chief, Chong Pit Fah, treated the news report on that the Land and Survey Department has been given six months to work out a win-win situation mechanism, following its decision to give the said right to Sedco, as does not mean anything because “at the end of it, it is still a monopoly.”

“It is a government duty to create more opportunities for the business community, and not to steal from the business community…whatever the Land and Survey Department Director had said, it is still purely a monopoly,” he said.

The Director Datuk Osman Jamal had said in the report that this (the win-win situation mechanism) showed that the move was not a monopoly exercise, adding the mechanism was being drawn up by taking into consideration the interest of all the stakeholders namely the State Government, users in the private sector such as the Sabah Housing Developers Association (Shareda) and the sand mining operators themselves.

Reiterating that with the move it means that it would expedite the approval as well as renewal of permit for the for the sand dredging operators, said Osman, adding Sedco is required to pay a certain amount of deposit to his department before it allocates the quota for the river sand dredging operators.

In this respect, Osman said incidence of sand thefts could be controlled because one sand dredging operator would be given one whole area whereas previously several operators could be working in one area, allowing opportunity for thieves to steal sand from the area between these operators.

Chong said this, to the party, is another monopoly exercise, where one operator which Sedco has all the right to allocate to as it like will monopolise the sand dredging business in the one area for itself, while other operators will be left without nothing.

“If the department is concerned about sand dredging theft, then it should strengthen it enforcement works, and not resorting to such a monopoly exercise…to me, there is no need to do more actually but just strengthen the department’s enforcement,” he said.

Believing that with strong and proactive enforcement and monitoring activities, the department can actually deal with the sand dredging theft activity in the State, he said after all, most of the sand dredging activities are carried out near town areas and not in the hulu area (upstream) which cannot be easily accessed.