A sympathetic expose by a West Malaysian on Sabah's poverty-stricken folks

I read Dr Hams letter and cannot help but agree with many of his observations. I worked in Sabah for over seven years as a house officer and medical officer. After my housemanship, I was sent to Ranau to serve in the district hospital. What Dr Hams described in Kota Marudu is not something isolated to that district alone in Sabah . It is an often repeated story in the whole of Sabah .

My first introduction to the poverty in Sabah came during my first months there, when a sweet 70- year-old lady from Kota Marudu was sent to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital with deep jaundice. She lived alone in a small village off Kota Marudu and noticed the jaundice about a month before.

She had no money for the taxi fare and so waited a month to sell off her chickens to have enough money to pay RM50 for the transport to Kota Marudu Hospital . She had to walk two miles to get to the road to get to the taxi.

Having been born, bred and educated in Peninsular Malaysia , I was shocked. When she arrived, she was septic and had a gallstone lodged in her common bile duct. The stone was duly removed but she was found to have a heart problem that required a pacemaker. We arranged for her to get a permanent pacemaker but she refused.

When I pressed her for her reason, she told me that she couldn't afford to buy batteries for the pacemaker, having sold off her chickens. Once I explained to her that the batteries would last for years and we would provide them, she agreed to the pacemaker.

Ranau town itself has roads and is on the main highway between Sandakan and Kota Kinabalu. It developed primarily as a result of the Mamut Copper Mines in the district. However, highway in this context means a two lane road with frequent landslides and potholes, with a two-hour drive to Kota Kinabalu.

Outside Ranau, transportation becomes a problem as tarred roads disappear to become gravel or crudely marked logging trails. Anyone who has worked in Sabah would have the same stories to tell, of extreme poverty and poor transportation.

During my 2 years in Ranau, I've heard and seen it all, patients with cerebral malaria, a condition unheard of in Peninsular Malaysia, coming in after 48 hours to the hospital from places like Kaingaran and Karagasan, with relatives having to push the 'pirate taxi' through the mud, spending RM50 on fare during the monsoon season, the equivalent of 2 months income, this too when petrol was only around RM1.20 a litre in Ranau.

Patients having to delay treatment for life threatening conditions because a bridge washed away along the trail (I won't even call it a road) to Tambunan. Emergency surgery such as caesarian sections, appendectomies and even ectopic pregnancies had to be performed in our little district hospitals by Medical Officers with little more than 4 months housemanship experience.

Medical emergencies such as myocardial infarctions, which in Peninsular Malaysia would be managed in a Coronary Care Unit setting, had to be managed in the district hospital level. I'm grateful however, that my staff in that hospital were the best I've ever had the pleasure of working with and were dedicated enough to want to make a difference in their patients' lives.

But poor transportation does not only affect the access to healthcare. Having no roads to be able to transport their agricultural produce for sale means that these people are stuck in a never ending cycle of poverty.

At most, some of them get RM20 to RM50 by selling their produce to middlemen to be sold at the monthly tamu or market at prices that are perhaps only 10 percent of the value of the goods. These innocent people are also preyed upon by traveling cloth merchants, mostly foreigners, who offer them 'easy payment schemes' to buy cloth for clothes, and when they cannot pay for the cloth and the interest accumulates, they end up having to marry their daughters to these men, who often have wives back home in Pakistan.

One of the cases I could never forget was of the family who came to Ranau Hospital just as I was leaving, a family who had failed crops, were hungry and unable to get food. The father collected some toad eggs and fed them to the whole family in a desperate attempt to stave off hunger. When they arrived at our little emergency room, one of the children were dead and two passed away within 10 minutes of arrival in our casualty unit due to poisoning.

Education is a problem in parts of Sabah outside major towns like Kota Kinabalu at the moment. Many children would be lucky to be able to get to a school or even afford to get to one. Most of my patients outside Ranau were lucky to even have a primary school education and a vast number of women marry in their teens.

I've had 14 year olds delivering babies in Ranau, most of them have never ever stepped foot in a school. The education level is so poor that many women feed their children condensed milk thinking that it's better than breast milk.

But at the heart of it all, these mothers want the best for their children but are not empowered with the knowledge to help them. Major towns in Sabah have electricity courtesy of the Sabah Electricity Board, but smaller villages have either diesel generators or rely on candles or lamps when night falls.

How can children study in these conditions? Like many doctors in the districts, I had to learn Dusun to communicate better with these patients who could speak little else.

Forty five years after the formation of Malaysia, the promise of a better life for these poor Dusun, Murut and Rungus patients in the districts of Sabah is a pipe dream at best. How can our politicians claim to have brought development to the state and have neglected these poor people, many of whom still wear the cheap t-shirts and caps given free by political parties from many elections ago.

How can I claim to be proud of Putrajaya with it's beautiful bridges and lamp posts and the Petronas twin Towers when our fellow Malaysians in Sabah are so neglected?

The cycle of poverty and illiteracy one sees in the districts in Sabah brings despair to the heart. Eradication of poverty must tackle the real issues of education and transport and not just handouts to poor people.

By all means, declare Sept 16th a public holiday, but remember it in it's real context, where we made a promise to our brethren in Sabah and Sarawak to treat them as equals in Malaysia, and give them the development they've been long denied.

67 comments:

  1. Touching indeed...especially coming from a wesr msian?? Priceless!!

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    1. tidak perlu kita bergantung kepada orang luar untuk mengentengahkan isu2 di sabah...

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    2. Kebanyakan orang Semenanjung suka mengelar rakyat Sabah bodoh, memang ramai yang mengeluarkan komen yang memburukkan Sabah.

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    3. Mereka yang menunding jari terhadap rakyat Sabah menunding 4 jari ke arah mereka sendiri.

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    4. THIS SYMPATHETIC ACCOUNT OF SABAH REALITY MUST WAKE US UP TO THE REALITY THAT WE HAVE BEEN RE-COLONISED AND PLUNDERED OF WEALTH THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN USED TO HELP THE POOR DESCRIBED HERE.

      WE MUST WAKE UP & START WORKING FOR OUR FREEDOM AND INDEPENDENCE- WITHOUT TAKING BACK OUR COUNTRY AND REGAINING OUR RIGHTS MALAYA WILL CONTINUE TO DRAIN OUT OUR RESOURCES UNDER WHATEVR GOVERNMENT.

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  2. Bumi mana yang tidak ditimpa hujan? Negeri mana yang tiada masalah? Adakah kita menjangkakan keadaan Sabah sangat sempurna? Walaupun bukan kerajaan BN yang mentadbir, belum tentu kerajaan (mana2 dari parti pembangkang sekarang) mampu bawa perubahan yang ketara dalam masa yang singkat.

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    1. namun yang pasti kerajaan BN sentiasa berusaha untuk membangunkan sabah...

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    2. Betul tu, mana ada Negeri yang betul2 zero kemiskinan, semua tempayt pun mesti ada masalah, kerajaan telah berusaha membantu rakyat.

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    3. Mana2 pun mesti ada masalah seperti ini, namun ila menjelang PRU, baru isu ini di panaskan di Sabah.

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    4. Kemiskinan berlaku di mana-mana negara, dalam negara membangun seperti AS juga berlakunya kemiskinan.

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    5. Based on the household income survey by the national Statistics Department 2009, the poverty level in Sabah has dropped from 24.2 per cent in 2004 to 19.7 per cent in 2009.

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    6. The reduction in the poverty rate proved that the government’s efforts to reduce the poverty rate had been successful

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  3. Selepas penubuhan M'sia, kerajaan Sabah bertukar tangan beberapa kali. Ini mungkin salah satu sebab kenapa pembangunan tidak dapat dibuat secara menyeluruh kerana lain kerajaan, lain pentadbirannya.

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    1. dan juga sistem penggiliran KM yang membantutkan perancangan pembangunan sabah...kepimpinan kerajaan yang kerap bersilih ganti tidak menguntungkan negeri tetapi memuaskan hati ahli2 politik sahaja..sejak sistem ini dihapuskan dan musa menjadi KM sabah, kini sabah dalam landasan yang betul untuk terus membangun..

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    2. couldn't agree more with your comment. With the constant change of government in sabah, its no wonder that the development in sabah is not yet stabil.

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    3. ya.. kerana bertukar tangan byk projek tidak jalan.. setiap pemimpin lain projek. projek lama dibiarkan.

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    4. Namun, di bawah pimpinan Datuk Musa, Negeri Sabah sudah semakin baik dari segi ekonomi dan juga pembangunan.

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  4. Put aside the political self-interests and start to focus on the folks.

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    1. kepentingan peribadi dan kepentingan politik harus diketepikan..fokus harus ditumpukan kepada pembangunan negeri...dan itulah yang dilakukan oleh kerajaan negeri sabah..

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  5. diharapkan masalah2 yang dihadapi oleh rakyat terutama di kawasan pendalaman sabah akan diberi perhatian dan diselesaikan segera.

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    1. The rural areas should be government top priority ensure development are being done.

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    2. Harap bajet kali ini lebih di beri tumpuan kepada pembangunan luar bandar.

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  6. i'm sure the govt is trying their best to solve the rakyat's issue..

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    1. various programs were implemented by the government to solve poverty in sabah but unfortunately there are some people who does not know about the programs.

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  7. There are still many people suffering from poverty especially in the rural areas. What is the wakil rakyat doing while these poor people suffering???

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    1. I hope the people representatives would work extra hard to actually "turun padang" and see the people's living conditions and provide aids for them.

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    2. The people representatives must do their best to help the hardcore poor to improve their lives.

      http://sabah-go-green.blogspot.com/

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  8. Hopefully the poverty in the state will be eradicated so that the quality of life of the people can be improved.

    http://sabah-go-green.blogspot.com/

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    1. Kemiskinan tidak mampu diselesaikan dalam masa sehari, sebulan ataupun setahun, ia memerlukan usaha yang berterusan untuk melihat keberkesanannya.

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  9. pembangunan di kawasan luar bandar harus diutamakan. jgn hnya tumpukan kawasan bndar.

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    1. Kerajaan pernah memperkenalkan pelbagai program pembangunan dalam sektor agriculture, aquaculture and banyak lagi di kawasan pedalaman. Rakyat perlulah mengambil kesempatan unuk meningkatkan pendapatan mereka.

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  10. byk usaha dilakukan kerajaan dalam membasmi kemiskinan seperti program e-kasih, projk2 keusahawanan dan mcm2. penduduk harus manfaatkan bantuan dan peluang yang ada.

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    1. Betul tu, progam2 yang di anjur kan oleh kerajaan untuk membantu rakyat perlu di manfaatkan oleh penduduk.

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    2. Tanpa kerjasama daripada rakyat dalam inisiatif kerajaan, program-program ini tidak akan berjaya juga.

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  11. Penduduk harus mengambil peluang dengan segala bantuan dan kemudahan yang di beri oleh kerajaan.

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    1. individu juga perlu bijak mencari peluang untuk majukan diri sendiri.

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    2. Sama-samalah berusaha untuk mengeluarkan diri daripada kemiskinan. Kerjasama antara kerajaan dan rakyat adalah penting.

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  12. Diharapkan masalah kemiskinan di sabah dapat di selesaikan, namun bukan senang untuk mencapainya, rakyat sendri harus berusaha untuk memajukan diri sendiri.

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  13. kerajaan pasti akan menjalankan tugas mereka untuk menbantu rakyat, cuma mungkin kita perlu bersabar sikit, bukan boleh buat dalam masa yang singkat.

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    1. semuanya memerlukan masa, yang penting usaha berterusan perlu dibuat.

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  14. Kerajaan mementingkan pelajaran, kawasan bandar tidak di lupakan, kemudahan internet juga di beri bagi pelajar luar bandar.

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    1. teruskan usaha untuk memberikan kemudahan kepada pelajar luar bandar.

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  15. Wakil rakyat juga ahrus sentiasa turun padang bagi memastikan rakyat di kawasan berkenaan dapat mengadu jika ada sebarang masalah.

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  16. usaha untuk memajukan rakyat harus dilakukan sepanjang masa.

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    1. It take long term planning and continuous efforts in order to see results on poverty eradication.

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    2. The government has introduced many initiatives to help reduce the poverty rates, programs in agriculture, aquaculture, fishery and entrepreneurship.

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  17. jika diperhatikan Sabah sudah berubah berbanding dulu. apa pun, masih banyak yang perlu dibuat..teruskan usaha.

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    1. yup.. dan rakyat Sabah juga perlu berubah.. bukan parti politik yang menentukan masa depan kita..

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  18. pembangunan kini giat dilaksanakan di Sabah. harap Sabah akan jadi lebih membangun pada masa depan.

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    1. Kerajaan Sabah berharap Sabah boleh mencapai status negeri berpendapat tinggi pada 2020.

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    2. bukan sahaja pembangunan, malah pelbagai bantuan disediakan oleh kerajaan untuk rakyat di negeri ini.. dengan adanya bantuan2 kerajaan ini, rakyat tempatan sepatutnya lebih kedepan berbanding dengan bukan bumiputera..

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  19. The figures released by the Economic Planning Unit in 2004 showed that the poverty rate in Nabawan was 70.8 per cent,
    Kudat 41.7 per cent,
    Pitas 46.3 per cent,
    Kota Marudu 37.1 per cent,
    36.0 per cent in Kota Belud,
    20.5 per cent in Tuaran,
    38.2 per cent in Ranau,
    35.1 per cent in Beluran,
    6.7 per cent in Penampang,
    8.4 per cent in Kota Kinabalu,
    15.3 per cent in Sandakan,
    14.3 per cent in Kuala Penyu,
    14.7 per cent in Papar,
    44 per cent in Tambunan,
    15.8 per cent Sipitang,
    20.3 per cent in Beaufort,
    30.1 per cent in Keningau,
    30.8 per cent in Kinabatangan,
    31.6 per cent in Tenom,
    35.7 per cent in Tongod,
    21.3 per cent in Lahad Datu,
    38.6 per cent in Kunak,
    38.1 per cent in Semporna and 21.4 per cent in Tawau.

    http://kgsilou.blogspot.com/2012/07/poverty-level-in-sabah-drops.html

    Poverty eradication does not happen in a day, but we can see there is a drop in poverty level in recent years.

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  20. KErajaan Negeri Sabah seharusnya berusaha dengan lebih untuk menyelesaikan masalah yang dihadapi di Sabah ini. Peranan setiap pihak yang ada perlu dilaksanakan.

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  21. Mengenai kemiskinan di Sabah ini, kerajaan tidak pernah duduk diam dan cuba memberikan pelbagai program dan skim untuk diberikan keapda mereka ini. Ini bertujuan untuk memberikan mereka ini pendapatan sendiri untuk menampung kehidupan seharian dan juga mengeluarkan dari kemiskinan.

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  22. Kawasan Ranau memang perlu diberikan perhatian untuk pembangunan. Tambahan lagi kawasan itu antara tempat perlancongan maka perlulah terus diusahakan untuk pembangunan.

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  23. Perlu diteliti juga punca perkara ini berlaku. Kita tidak mahu perkara ini terus menjadi isu pihak tertentu.

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  24. kalau Pakatan memerintah negara ini, adakah tidak akan ada penduduk miskin di Malaysia?? negeri maju seperti Selangor dan Pulau Pinang juga masih ada penduduk miskin..

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  25. The Department of Rural Development has been set up to constantly monitor the effectiveness of each poverty reduction programme as well as facilitate the exchange of information among the relevant agencies. Towards this end, government agencies involved in poverty reduction programmes will be directed to prepare comprehensive reports on progress and analysis on a regular basis. This will help ensure that allocated resources are utilised efficiently and programmes are implemented effectively.

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  26. Meeting the poverty target requires strong political will and commitment. In this respect, the State Government will continue to support the implementation of successful poverty reduction programmes. The State Government, in collaboration with the Federal Government, will launch integrated programmes to progressively reduce the incidence of poverty in Sabah. While the expected higher economic growth rate will be a major factor contributing to the reduction of poverty in the State, the government will also play a pivotal role. This is particularly vital given the geographic size of the State and its population distribution pattern.

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  27. An essential ingredient in any poverty reduction programme is the concept of self-reliance. Hence, workable and clearly defined poverty reduction strategies which subscribe to the concept of self-reliance, empowerment, long-term growth and development will be implemented. This is crucial given that most of what happens to the poor in the long run is dependent on their own efforts. Providing them with the means to look for and maximise every asset available, plus hard work in the right endeavours, can pay off. In turn, this will require helping the poor understand their own situations and the reasons why problems exist.

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  28. The poorest will be given specific attention first for reason of exigency. For the landless, resettlement schemes with proper housing and amenities will be provided. For those who are economically active but lack the economic resources, development schemes will be provided for them to undertake small resource-based economic activities either individually or through community enterprises. In the case of those who own land but have no means of developing it, a programme to promote group farming and village restructuring will be implemented. Children from the poorest households will also be provided with access to appropriate facilities such as village hostels, food and nutritional assistance and transportation. In addition, relevant programmes which have been successful in Peninsular Malaysia will also be implemented in Sabah.

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  29. Development has affected some households adversely. In particular, the increased mobility of male heads of poorer households in search of economic opportunities has left some women to fend for themselves and their children. To address the issue, the government will, where necessary, enhance access of women to skills training and to resources for productive activities so as to increase their income.

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  30. Programmes to reduce poverty will be on a self-sustaining basis. As such, they will be oriented towards increasing poor households’ capabilities in production, generation of incomes and consumption. The government will also endeavour to actively solicit the participation of non-governmental organisations and other private sector agencies in addressing the poverty problems in Sabah.

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  31. In order to minimise association of poverty along ethnic lines, poverty reduction programmes will be directed at both the rural and urban poor. For the rural poor, a key consideration is to increase their production and productivity in agriculture and related activities. Efficiency, productivity and income of smallholdings will continue to be enhanced through voluntary consolidation of uneconomic-size holdings and the opening up of new lands. Farmers will be encouraged to supplement their incomes with other agricultural or off-farm activities. In other words, programmes which help to diversify and raise the income level of the rural poor will be taken up. Skills formation, provision for adequate credit to support these programmes, marketing facilities, provision for additional employment opportunities, provision of basic services, and programmes to fully utilise local resources will also be essential. In designing these programmes, a household rather than individual approach will be followed since the focus is on the economic uplift of the household through a package of activities involving all working members of the household.

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  32. Apart from skills, one major obstacle to rural entrepreneurship lies in accessibility to credit by the poor. In this respect, the State Government’s Projek Usahamaju has been met with some success in facilitating the poor’s access to credit. So far, more than 6,000 rural entrepreneurs have benefited from the project since its implementation in 1988, with an accumulated loan disbursement of over RM12 million. Under the OPPS, the Projek Usahamaju will be expanded in both loan amount and the number of participants.

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  33. In the urban areas, the provision of improved opportunities for better income and greater access to basic amenities such as affordable housing, transportation and utility will play a major part in reducing relative poverty. In order to ensure orderly growth, proper planning and zoning in urban development will be undertaken. This will not only control the further growth of squatters and slum areas but also offer new opportunities for the urban poor to be involved in small scale businesses and industries.

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  34. In collaboration with the Federal Government, Sabah will take the bold step of seeking to provide universal coverage for basic essential services to every village and communities by the year 2010 or earlier. In moving towards this objective, however, emphasis will be placed on the active participation of both the rural and urban poor. The private sector is also encouraged to be more proactive in poverty eradication programmes. This is to ensure that every segment of the society will benefit equitably in the creation of a New Sabah.

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