CC Pung
Justice of Peace , Tokoh Wartawan Sabah and Labuan.
Dose of his philosophical musings.
I ofen asked myself if my views are overly cynical or narrow or naive such as when I thought that the Sabah government is not playing its marbles right and seemingly tone deaf.
Consider this article ….
Poverty in Sabah is an old story. Poverty figures, good or not, depends on whom you want to believe.
Looking at this new Hajaji (Sabah chief minister) announcement, I get a feeling that no agency in particular was dealing with poverty (no wonder it never seemed to get better) until his government created a new one called Sabah Maju Jaya (SMJ) Secretariat.
To me, that’s equivalent to someone spending time to figure out how the wheel works!
Sabah was talking about poverty eradication before Deng Xioping opened up China’s economy in the 80s.
Since then, hundreds of millions in China have been lifted out of poverty while Sabah and the central government still can’t agree on basic statistics.
Can SMJ Secretariat do a miracle? In how many years? One thing is sure, it’s not going to happen in my lifetime.
I hope the reporters wrote correctly that Hajiji ‘instructed’ investors and government-linked companies on their employment policies.
I think Hajiji is not that tone deaf. Telling investors who and how to hire doesn’t sound correct as Sabah perpetually struggles to attract investors.
A member of the state-sanctioned economic advisory just last week alleged that most of the 250+ Sabah GLCs are loss making and dysfunctional.
Perhaps, one of the first things that Hajiji need to do is to ensure that his media team does not paraphrase him out of context, or simplify his utterances to ridiculousness.
I understand that he habitually speaks in Bahasa Melayu.
This particular piece of news is in English.
Listening to a speech in one language and writing news on it in a different language poses challenges on language skills, and appreciating the different nuances.
God forbid … it looks like poverty in Sabah is here to stay.
Editor: The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of Talantang.
