From riches to rags to riches, a lesson in juggling numbers 

By Sebastian Lee

Sabahans are rightly indignant. Thirty years ago, their resource-rich state was Malaysia’s richest. Today, it is the poorest of the South-East Asian federation’s 13. This does not make sense to most of the three million people who, by and large, enjoy a high standard of living. Royalties from oil and gas, export earnings from methanol, timber, palm oil, and other commodities, and a hefty shot of tourist money have brought affluence to city dwellers and their neighbouring villagers. The city and towns buzz with business. Roads are jammed by sparkling new Toyotas and Mercedes Benzes. Restaurants and coffee shops are packed at lunch time. Hotels are nearing full occupancy and new multi-million ringgit building complexes complete the picture of Sabah’s economic grandeur.

The hammering din of piling machines and the roar of tractors, jackhammers and concrete mixers would have drowned any protests of poverty in this former British colony. Yet statistics tell a different story. Officially, Sabah’s poverty rate is the highest at 16%, about three times the national average. A year ago, it was hovering around 24%. That it could fall by a third in such a short time is telling on the incongruity of numbers. But they do speak of bigger political and social-economic problems that have plagued the federal and state governments. Not least is the almost herculean task of balancing wealth between the rich and the poor who form about three-quarters of Sabah’s rural population.

A thorny problem that has upset socio-economic planners and policy makers is the large presence of illegal immigrants from The Philippines and Indonesia. They provide much needed cheap labour for the building, plantation and food industries; yet they are mostly blamed for the state’s poverty. Many Filipinos fled to Sabah in the 1970s at the height of a civil war between Muslim separatists and their government for autonomy of the southern Philippines. They were joined by Indonesians who sought jobs as labourers amid a timber and construction boom.

Nobody knows their number. Figures between 200,000 and a million have been brandished about by the Filipino and Indonesian consulates and Sabah officials. Census takers estimate about 811,000 foreigners are in the north Borneo island state. They include Indian citizens and a few Westerners, Japanese and Koreans. The Filipinos and Indonesians make up the majority of the state’s poor people, living on daily wages of 20 to 40 ringgit from working on construction sites and plantations, and waiting at tables in coffee shops. Excluding them from the income survey would bring down Sabah’s poverty ratio by a fifth to about 13%. But that does not solve the problems of poor Sabahans who live mainly in villages.

Musa Aman, the chief minister, views the statistics disdainfully. After taking office six years ago, he set himself the unenviable, but altruistic, task of wiping out poverty in his state and making it Malaysia’s most developed in six years time. The countdown to zero has already begun in earnest and he has only a few months left to achieve his goal.

More than three billion ringgit ($860m) of state and federal money has already been spent to help villagers farm their land with vegetables, fruit, rice, oil palm and rubber; raise cattle, goats, poultry and fish. The government also trains villagers in vocations: tailoring, hairdressing and bakery. A microcredit scheme modelled on the success of the Bangladeshi Grameen Bank, offers low-interest loans to help villagers set up small businesses. Cash is given regularly to old people, orphans and the very poor. Roads and bridges are built in remote villages to allow farmers to transport their produce to Tamus (Sabah’s version of a flea market) in towns. Thousands of low- and medium-cost houses have been built for the rural people. “The aim,” says a state official, “is to reduce Sabah’s squatter colonies to zero.”

This year, the federal government has given Sabah 580m ringgit to spend on development projects to rid Sabahans of poverty while the state is spending almost 160m ringgit. Such huge spending shows that the path from rags to riches is not easy, considering that Sabah is the size of Scotland and more than 70% of the state is rural.

Mr Musa has been fair and magnanimous in bringing wealth to his people. The poor will not be poor anymore but they must now learn to stand on their feet. The rich will get richer but not at the expense of the poor. Next year, Sabahans will see glory return to their state when it is taken off the poor list. And the man who has made this happen is Musa Aman. 

-- Insight Sabah