Green activist and lawyer Kong Hong Ming has disputed the manner in which the Sabah state government conducted a special probe into allegations of sea coral mining by an operator in waters off Tawau for 12 years.

The special probe, details of which were released yesterday afternoon concluded that "the operator had only mined dead sea coral in the licensed area and not living coral as implied."

NONE Otherwise, the special probe confirmed that "Kong's allegation of the operator working with a long expired licence was correct". The operator, Syarikat CNY, was directed by the state government on June 25 to stop work.

The special probe team also confirmed that "the operator has been in violation of the Environmental Protection Enactment 2002 and the Land Ordinance 1968."

The special probe team recommended that the operator be charged in court under the Land Ordinance Chapter 68 "if there are sufficient grounds to do so" for carrying out illegal mining activities for four years i.e. 2005 to 2009. The years 1997 to 2000, when illegal mining was also carried out, are not mentioned.

"The probe was not thorough enough as they only paid one cursory visit to the mentioned sites including a small 2.016 hectare mining area," said Kong, picking holes in the statement earlier by state minister for tourism, culture and environment Masidi Manjun on the special probe.

"Why didn't they go through the invoices, sales orders and product list of the company or interview their client list? They would have discovered that the operator was not selling sea sand for construction as claimed."

coral reef mining of tawau sabah 130609 07 Kong, a former state minister and presently PKR Tawau chief, also disagrees with the special probe report's conclusion that "there was only dead sea coral in the 2.016 hectare area where the operator had been earlier licenced to mine."

Masidi clarified in his statement that "dead sea coral could be classified as part of sea sand" which the operator in question was licenced to mine for five years until 2005.

"If there is only dead sea coral in the area inspected, what happened to the living coral? Dead sea coral forms the substrate for living coral," pointed out Kong. "It is ridiculous to suggest that one vast area is composed of nothing but dead sea coral."

Huge sea hammers

Kong referred to his earlier statements whereby he had alleged that the operator had been using huge sea hammers to demolish and kill the corals in the dead of night before recovering them several hours later. The operations had been going on not only in the patch of sea inspected by Masidi's ministry but also moved elsewhere undetected for 12 years, reiterated Kong, "and covering large areas of the sea."

"Masidi's team did not inspect the other areas mined by the operator for sea coral under the guise of mining sea sand," fumed Kong.

coral reef mining of tawau sabah 130609 06 "The probe is nothing but an exercise in red tape, confining themselves to the actual area licenced to the operator initially. Why did they restrict the probe area? What can they hope to find in this manner? It's just eyewash?"

"There isn't even one tiny bit of admission about official negligence."

Kong, a civil engineer with the state government for 10 years before he took up law in London, has his suspicions that the probe was just conducted as a public relations exercise to allay public fears. He sees a cover-up of clear-cut incompetence and napping among the various state authorities concerned.

Masidi confirmed in his statement that a special probe team inspected three sites totaling 2.016 hectares covered by TOL (Temporary Occupation Licence) 10900268 near Teluk Sibuko in the Kalumpang Sea, a temporary storage facility at CL (Country Lease) 105465825 in Tanjung Batu and a processing factory at Mile 8, Apas Road, Tawau. All the inspections, both on land and sea, were conducted on 29 June following, according to him, a Malaysiakini report on 14 June and another report in Daily Express on 18 June.

"The special probe team discovered that the operator, Syarikat CNY, was no longer mining sea sand in the TOL area earlier licenced to them and there was no storage of any material in Tanjung Batu," said Masidi.

"Activities at the Apas Road factory were confined to processing the material mined before 27 May when the mining activities stopped." Kong started probing the mining sites in April this year.

TOL licence expired

It was confirmed by Masidi that the five-year TOL licence expired in 2005 and is yet to be renewed by the Lands and Survey Department (LSD). It was not disclosed whether the operator applied to renew the licence, and if so, why the LSD sat on the renewal application.

The TOL licence, before it expired, was issued based on an EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) report by the State Environmental Protection Department (SEPD) on Sept 3, 2002. It is not explained why the EIA report came two years after the five-year sea sand mining licence was issued in 2000.

Masidi said the one-day June 29 probe followed an earlier visit to the sites on June 18 by a joint team comprising the SEPD, the Fisheries Department, the Assistant Collector of Land revenue Tawau, Marine Department and the LSD. The June 18 joint inspection team found "no evidence of the operator trespassing into the Friedrich Reef adjoining the licenced TOL area."

"As a result of the investigation by the special probe team, we can confirm that the allegation by Kong that there has been destruction of living coral in the waters off Tawau, is substantially incorrect," said Masidi in his statement.

"The Mineral and Geosciences Department has confirmed the dead sea coral mined in the licenced area can be classified as sea sand mixed with sea coral."

Elsewhere, Masidi's statement mentioned without comment Kong's allegations that the operator had mined 1.2 million metric tones of sea corals at the rate of 10,000 metric tones a month and that mining operations in fact started on 19, April 1997 i.e. three years before a five-year TOL was issued by the LSD.

The statement also noted without comment Kong's allegations that the operator had been mining close to the Semporna Marine Park, that he only used the 30 percent hard portions of the material that he mined and that heavy sea hammers were used to break down the sea corals in the dead of night.

Masidi's statement is the second by the state government on the subject of sea coral mining in Tawau waters. The first statement was issued by LSD Director Osmal Jamal on July 7, 2009 and gave a preview of the direction which the special probe had taken.