BORNEO INSIGHTS: Almost all the publicity and energy of protesters in Sarawak have been sucked into the raging debate over the construction of massive hydro-electric dams. Chief Minister Tan Sri Adenan Satem, like his predecessor Tun Abdul Taib Mahmud, is unfazed by the intensity and increasingly international scope of the opposition. However, little has been aired over the Sarawak government’s parallel track to ramp up coal-fired power generation.
Sarawak Energy Bhd (SEB) is investing RM1.5 bil in building the Balingian coal-fired power plant and had late last year signed up the Shanghai Electric Group (SEC) of China to construct the plant which can generate up to 600MW.
“The plant’s construction will commence this year itself and is expected to come into full operation by 2018 with the first power expected to be generated by end of 2017,” SEB chief executive officer Datuk Torstein Sjotveit said last October at the formal contract-signing for the project.
Balingian lies in central Sarawak, close to Mukah where Sarawak Press Metal already has a smelting facility and where the state government under Taib before had ambitions to create a new industrial corridor within the Melanau belt where his ancestors originate.
Those ambitions, therefore, have a political providence but the Balingian power plant decision was not a helter-skelter one. The plant will utilise abundant local coal deposits dug up more or less in-situ.
All the same, building a major coal-fired power plant on top of another currently operating at Sejingkat near Kuching takes the wind out of the sails of Sarawak’s boast to become a regional powerhouse for clean, renewable energy.
However, more immediately, the local business community in Sarawak has been complaining that it has seen little business spin-off from the power plant’s construction.
Sjotveit had stated that some 45% of related work associated with the project will go to local companies but that relates more to ancillary work such as building a connecting road. Such work, it is alleged, will benefit the “big boys” of Sarawak business which are invariably timber-based concerns with business tentacles reaching far and wide, primarily to service their timber business with little to nothing left to be contracted out to others.
The same complaint is of course being made of the Chinese companies undertaking power-related projects in Sarawak, whether coal-fired or dams. As is the business practice of these companies the world over, they are self-contained business entities that bring in virtually everything they need, down to legions of workers, for projects they undertake.
A local businessman said there is not even any chance of catering to the needs of such workers such as in supplying food or providing accommodation, the dismissive brush-off of these Chinese concerns being as predictable as it is universal: that only they know best how to cater to the allegedly demanding peculiarities of their workers.
Such business practices may be at least partially understandable when China’s companies move into such truly alien places as Africa (where these companies and indirectly China itself still meet growing resentment and even localised), they are less defensible in Sarawak. Many small businesses in Sarawak are in the hands of local Chinese who presumably are better positioned to cater to the needs of those coming from China, be they company managers or ordinary workers.
It is perhaps too much to expect that these Chinese businesses will change entrenched practices and habits just to adapt and accommodate the aspirations of local Sarawak businesses but it is surely incumbent on the state government to draw clear lines requiring these foreign contractors to buy and use products and services available locally instead of bringing in everything they need, lock, stock and barrel.
Given the growing presence of Chinese contractors and investors in Sarawak, the local business complaints should not be taken too lightly lest resentment builds up, leading to animosities against China’s participation in the state’s economic scene.
The state government also needs to consider placing a moratorium on the construction of more coal-fired power plants after Balingian. While the advantages of so-called “clean” energy sources such as hydro-power are certainly hyped given the massive environmental impact and costs of constructing huge dams, it can at least be defended as a renewable source of power.
There are unfortunately no such ambiguities concerning coal-fired plants. The only defence for their existence in Sarawak is the availability of locally-produced coal for their use.
Even the undoubtedly desirable policy goal of achieving a healthy energy mix should henceforth be concentrated on greater research and investments in other sources of renewable and clean energy and not be cited as the rationale for building more coal-fired plants.
More coal-fired power plants and more huge dams are clearly a very high price Sarawak is paying for the dubious economic benefit of heavy industrialisation. Even if such industrialisation clearly benefits ordinary Sarawakians in the long term, the fact that they are seeing so little of the spin-off benefits is sowing suspicions and resentment. The fear is that the state’s long-term game-plan will perpetuate an unhealthy economic structure that sees only the elite benefiting.
Worse, such a local elite may, over time, collaborate more closely with foreign interests and eventually become beholden to such interests, to the detriment of ordinary Sarawakians.
The people protesting against the building of huge dams, therefore, should not be painted with the broad brush of being simplistic and anti-development. They may one day come to be regarded by more and more fellow Sarawakians as brave prophets who foretell tales of individual ruin.
Let these protesters not turn out to be true harbingers of misfortune in a classic case of wanton economic exploitation by forces beyond anyone’s control.-Focus Malaysia
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