SANDAKAN – Batu Sapi MP Khairul Firdaus Akbar Khan has urged the Sabah government to stop converting the constituency into an industrial zone as it is more suitable to be developed as a tourism and fisheries hub.
He said the constituency, located in the coastal area, is unsuitable for factories because of the risks that it can be polluted with waste discharge from factories and that the area does not have an electricity supply that is stable enough to cater to large factories.
“Please, this area is not suitable to become an industrial zone anymore. This area is for fishermen and for tourism (sector). Not for the industrial (sector). Who would set up a factory on the beach? No one!
“Batu Sapi cannot have too many factories. The existing factories here are not even following the rules (discharging waste into the sea and polluting the air).
“Go to Batu Sapi at 5am and see the smoke in the air.
“They (factories) have been like that for the past 20 years. It is a hard pill to swallow but that is the truth (about what is happening) in Batu Sapi,” he said.
Khairul said this when officiating a tourism volunteer programme to revitalise the Batu Sapi Heritage Park here recently.
Batu Sapi, one of three parliament seats in the Sandakan district other than Sandakan and Libaran, is less than ten minutes from the Sandakan township.
The residents here comprise mostly fishermen or factory workers, with several factories in the area, including several timber factories and plywood mills, as well as the Sandakan Palm Oil Industrial Cluster, which has reportedly failed to attract investors.
Meanwhile, Khairul urged the Sandakan Municipal Council to help and expedite the process of gazetteing the villages in Batu Sapi as official villages, saying he would personally present the council’s paperwork to Chief Minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Mohd Noor.
Batu Sapi was made up of several water villages, only a few of which were officially gazetted as villages, leaving the rest, such as Kg Sundang Laut, to be considered squatter settlements.
He suggested that the matter had taken so long because people had the wrong impression that villagers in Batu Sapi were foreigners, and he emphasised that the villagers were actually Malaysians born in Sabah.
“There was once…a certain party had asked the chief minister (Hajiji) not to go into villages in Batu Sapi (for a programme), claiming that these are ‘kampung pelarian’ (refugees’ villages). This is the people’s mindset! This is the problem! It is so stupid!
“There are over 4,000 voters in these villages. They are not foreigners! They are my family and I will protect and fight for my family!” he said.
In another development, Khairul, who is also tourism, arts and culture deputy minister, said his ministry has initiated a strategic partnership with SMC and the Batu Sapi MP office to develop the tourism sector in Batu Sapi, starting with the Batu Sapi Heritage Park.
At the event, he received a tourism blueprint from SMC president Henry Idol and expressed hope that he would be able to develop and revitalise the park, making it one of the best tourist destinations in Sandakan.
The SMC is responsible for protecting the Batu Sapi Heritage Park, which was once one of Sandakan’s main attractions, and where a rock resembling a three-legged cow can be seen a few metres away from the beach.
However, SMC is reportedly struggling to maintain the park because its facilities are constantly vandalised and its property stolen by thieves.
With the Batu Sapi MP himself pleading with the Sabah government to forgo the idea of developing the industrial zone here, upgrading the Batu Sapi Heritage Park would be a vital starting point for the constituency to head in the direction of the tourism sector. — November 21, 2023