Most Read
Most Commented
Read more like this
mk-logo
From Our Readers

The recent tariff hikes in electricity will indeed unfairly affect the people of Sarawak even though this largest state in Malaysia is very generously endowed with large reserves of natural gas and oil and the huge potential of electricity from hydro power.

Already it has a very successful hydro scheme at Batang Ai that produces some 100MW which is something like one third of the state's power requirement at present. The remaining two thirds comes from natural gas generation and an entirely superfluous coal plant at Sejinkat in Kuching.

When the Bakun Dam scheme is completed, then another 2,000MW will become available which is far more than the state needs for many years to come. I will not go into the entirely hare-brained reasons why this project was ever started but it is in a similar category to silly half-bridges to Singapore, Johor Disneylandm etc.

But since the Bakun Dam is going to come on stream at some time in the future, our dedicated bunch of corrupt politicians in Sarawak, very ably headed by Taib Mahmud and his son, have now been trying to get an aluminum smelter built in Bintulu so that the huge surplus of power from the Bakun scheme can be used.

Aluminum smelters are one of the most polluting of industries and the reason why developed countries want to site them in countries other than their own is because they cause huge amounts of fluoride pollution. In addition, such a plant would bring virtually no benefit to the people of Sarawak because the power would be sold at a virtual cost price and employment in such a plant would be for only a few hundred people, most of them foreign technicians anyway. But of course, some very large benefits would arise for politicians and crony contractors for the initial construction cost amounting to several billions of ringgit.

I have a better suggestion for the use of the electricity that will be produced by Bakun. The government should build state-of-the-art public transport systems in all the major towns and cities of Sarawak, maybe using trams which can easily be installed on existing roads and which make very efficient use of electricity. Maybe, as a real innovation, the fares for such a system could be set at RM2 per day for any number and distance of trips.

Now, this would really benefit the people of Sarawak and particularly its poor and needy. Also, the environment would be vastly improved by offering an alternative to travel by cars and consequent reduction in levels of air pollution. Sarawak could claim a major contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gases and show Asia the way towards a more caring and sensible society.

Dream on. Our politicians and leaders do not think like this - they want only big and juicy mega- projects from which large sums of cash can be made quickly so that they can feather their nests for when they themselves retire to clean and environmentally conscious nations in the developed world.

ADS