PROLOGUE:
Sometime in late 2023 in my late drive to the City from my Kampong, since it was late and I felt a bit hungry, I dropped to this Tai Tai specialty Coffee & Fine Dine Place at Jalan Simpang Tiga Kuching. I had been passing and saw this "Colonial House" since 1986. I never knew until today, 3 Feb., 2025 when I was browsing on the Sarawak history, this building was the Office of the Borneo Company registered in London on 6 May 1856 whereby the Brookes had played significant roles in awarding them the right to harvest whatever wealth they could in return for taxes. The company was given exclusive rights to all minerals found in Sarawak,
including gold, and the rights to operate as a merchant, ship owner,
miner, agriculturist, and planter. The Company was involved in coal mining in Simunjan in 1858. Personally, I believe this was probably the source for the establishment of LSDC Primary School in 1856. Since October 1856, the Borneo Company allocated £200 a year to build an Anglican school in Simunjan District in Sadong area. Searching through, I can't figure out where was that school, nonetheless in Simunjan in early 1960s there was that LSDC Primary School which later be named SKR Abang Man where in 1968-72 I got my first formal education. Could BCL be part of the original Abang Man school setup?
(2) Is this a coincident "discovery"? Believing in the Al Quran saying, nothing is by coincident. Everything is in the knowledge of Allah and nothing is without His very purposes. But then on what purpose? My good friend said, "Why only now?" Nonetheless, for this writing and another, I would believe Allah led me to the idea of how Simunjan was born and according, probably how Taib got the idea about this very LCDA that I'm going to talk about.
(3) Digging into this Borneo Company Limited history - awarded and used by the Brookes, with enormous and diverse right, indeed BCL was the great source of the State income then. Was Taib inspired by this in regard to his move to established LCDA with the government within the government authorities? Very unfortunate, I didn't know or ever thought about this earlier. May be if I never retired early and got caught in the health issues I'm now facing, I won't have time to spare to research and write on all these. Herein I do hope those whom are steering LCDA now, should take Taib's be it his wisdom or not, try to see how BCL roles and functions fit into the LCDA outlook.
(4) BCL = acronym for Borneo Company Limited = Bunga Cinta Lestari, and Indonesian singer, whose song "Kerana Aku Cinta Kamu" sound very touchy and relevant in our Sarawak spirit to love and struggle for the State and her people. Could LCDA + PHSB = BCL then?
(5) Nonetheless to me, as human, Allah had created us with equal potentials. We should never look too high up neither too low down upon others. On earth if one's digs hard and smart, one would be rewarded with the best germs. Accordingly if one's piety and deeds are great, one would be granted both the best herein and Heaven. Hell is not only for the bad, but for the good whom did bad as well and or even for one to do nothing or indifferently shellfish. Therefore, this life is about a process that one's need to go through to attain to one best destiny - the Heaven. Purposely I pen this writing as "Being there" in remembrance of a movie titled "Being There" based on a novel written by Polish writer Jerzy Kosinski in 1970 that I saw way back in 1980, we indeed can't deny our roles and or fate that Allah has destined upon us to take on. In "Being there" Chance acted by Peter Seller was an illiterate gardener, but due to his hidden talents was "wrongly" picked as Economic Advisor to the Government at time of economic distress which signifies that Allah will take someone to His purpose and that person then must accomplish. We, get or not to who or what we want, all because Allah has His purposes on our very creation.
1. INTRODUCTION:
Taib passed away at 04:28 hours Feb 21, 2024 at the age of 87 years old. Taib’s political journey began in 1963 when he was appointed the youngest state minister in the first post-independence Cabinet formed by Sarawak’s first chief minister Tan Sri Stephen Kalong Ningkan. In 1970, he was elected Samarahan MP and went on to serve at federal level, holding various ministerial portfolios including Natural Resources, Primary Industries, Defence and Federal Teritories. On March 26, 1981, Taib was appointed Sarawak’s fourth Chief Minister, taking over from his uncle Abdul Rahman Yakub. After 33 years as Chief Minister, Taib stepped down in 2014 and was sworn in as the seventh Yang di-Pertua Negeri on March 1 the same year.
(2) My first direct and personal encounter with Taib was when I served as the Resident of Bintulu. In 2000, at my first Bintulu Development Authority (BDA) Board of Directors (BoD) meeting, due to some urgent matters he need to rush back to Kuching early. He requested the BoD meeting to proceed and as the Resident and BoD I was obliged to accompany him to the airport. From the Terminal to his official jet, we walked side-by-side and he suggested to me few things for me to take serious care. Bintulu originally was a typical Malay fishing village of about 5,000 population. With the establishment of the Petro Industries in 1970s, Bintulu then was going to experience the third economic boom in view of the implementation of USD5.00 billion Petronas MLNG III project and the restoration of the SDS plant that exploded on 25 Dec., 1997.
(4) My tasks were huge and heavy, thus I have to quickly build my good rapport with the people, public agencies, private sector, the NGO and surely among the political entities be they within the government and or the oppositions. The though and dedicated way I handled Bintulu, I believe gained me lots of inroad into Taib judgement over me thereon. Indeed when biding farewell for me in Dec., 2001, the Resident Engineer of MLNG III project presented me a book title: Jack Welch, the General Electric CEO. His thought was that I really emulated Jack Welch in how I administered Bintulu then, yet indeed I never knew this Jack and my administrative style was greatly influenced by my military training and my broad socio-economic understanding of Bintulu and Sarawak as a whole in view of my earlier 14 years experienced in the State Planning Unit (SPU) now named as Economic Planning Unit (EPU).
(5) After serving Bintulu from Sept., 1999 - Decembar 2001, I was requested to be back to head the SPU. I was so happy then for to be the head of the SPU had always been my personal ambition. Indeed I had worked out personally and institutionally so as to prepare myself and the SPU to be ready to shoulder a much tougher State's socio-economic planning and development management tasks ahead.
(7) I expressed my great reluctance to accept the new posting to Aziz. I told him how much I had prepared myself to be personally most capable to handle macro and sectoral State socio-economic development planning. I really want the job and love the job. Indeed I almost shade tear infront of him, when he said I had no choice but to go to LCDA. Indeed I left his office in a rushing manner without a thank and went to the loo to shade off and wash my face and walked back to my SPU office with total silent and deep sadness. I acted as if I had lost my very dearest love person.
(8) On 15 Sept., 2002, Taib called me to his residence. It was around 16:30 o'clock ie after Asyar. We talked almost past Maghrib. He talked and expressed lots of his disappointment with regard to the LCDA performances. He made it clear to me wrt the purpose of LCDA to facilitate big investment into Sarawak especially in the agriculture commodities development. Mostly I just listened. He also brilliantly expressed indirectly of what he expected for me to do. I can't comment as much as yet for I don't have the details. But again, I never given up my love to serve the SPU. I even requested Taib to let me have a look at the LCDA for about three months but he suggested I should stay for at least six months, then I'll come up with recommendations and upon such I would love to be placed back into the SPU.
(9) Exactly three months later, I have an audience with Taib and present him the weaknesses and all the Framework Plans to be taken to really vitalize and activate the LCDA. The smart Taib, he noded, he agreed and posted me one very simple question: "Can you give me who is the person whom can steer LCDA to undertake all of your suggestions?". I was mump. He then said "I believe you can do it, and you can excel better here in LCDA, so help me to make LCDA good". I was tight silent. I almost want to burst into tears. But Taib was really a smart observer. "You had done great in R&DO Bintulu, you had done so much in the SPU, I need fast, firm and action oriented person to run the LCDA. I have trust on you" and he later walked me out to the door, we walked slowly and by the doorway he paused and asked me: "Could you do me a favor, I need new member of Parliament for Simunjan, can you talk to all the ADUNs there and look for someone new. Secondly, can you give me a list of Civil Servants that are good". We shook hands and I left. I don't even thank him for the new post. I love my SPU to this day and professionally I never depart from such love. Indeed even while serving the LCDA for almost ten years, my SPU discipline indeed helped me a lot in running the LCDA. I reported to LCDA on the 16 Sept., 2002.
(10) Looking back, Taib's passing requests, I treated such as his first test upon me. Firstly, do I have "personal ambition in politic". I do but I concealed it tight. Surely he may want to see how good was my relationship with all Simunjan ADUNs and could I keep things to myself. Secondly, do I have favoritism with whom I would love to work with - Allah then guided me; Ied talk nicely wrt the MP candidate with all the ADUNs and left the matter for them to deal with Taib. For the second request, I kept only to myself to this point.
2. PURPOSE OF THIS WRITING:
Couple of months back, a friend called me to have lunch. We had not met since the emergence of Covid 19. We used to talk on leisure things and going into serious local politic. Once heated, we silent ourselves to good Ceylonese Briani Lamb Shank and thick Bubble Tea. He was among a few whom was not happy for me to leave the service abruptly in 2011 when the State really need someone who could pave the robust way for greater socio-economic transformation outreach. He even postulate that Taib must not be very unhappy for me to leave at times when he needed everybody whom he can trust to help him to deliver.
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(3) In Shaa Allah, along the same principle, I will also be writing my experiences at the SPU, R&DO, private sector and as well as social entrepreneur at the later stage.
3. THE 2003-2005 THRILLING PERIOD.
(3) My "fast tract promotion" created some uneasiness among certain quarters due to the fact that firstly, I was comparatively considered very junior. By tradition, those at N44 could only take responsibility to cover two grades above. For me the most I should go was at N52. There were then so many friends whom in term of service time frame were my seniors. Secondly, I had no corporate, financial and legal qualification, academically and experience wise. By right most having a view that I need to undertake understudying process first. Well personally I agreed with those reservation, just what choice do I have?
3.1 Skinning the LCDA:
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(2) I'm a self learning person. I read lots of management book by great writers, one of it was titled MBO - Management by Walking About, which basically needing the CEO to walk around to check on their staffs. I did such in my first two weeks in LCDA to observe the LCDA working culture. Around 0800 hours, the office was still empty. Some executives still having leisure to read news papers either in their offices and or the common resting place. I then wondered, when do they start working? Around 1000 hours, again the office seem to be empty. The staffs were out to have their tea break. Definitely my mind was questioning, don't they have works to do? Despite the morning knock off was at 12.30 hours, by 1200 hours the office was almost empty. Then definitely around 1530 hours again the staffs were having afternoon tea break and the office was sort of shut down thereon. LCDA was really in the inertia condition.
(3) There were numerous reasons why the staffs were behaving as such. I can see, I need to move lots of mountains in my course of actions - I was trained as military officer at UKM and my military instinct told me - shoot or die. I figured out I can't be dealing with everyone on my course. Holding to the principle of do first thing first, I studied the whole situation fast which in the military training is termed as Appreciation - studying details of the potential attacking grounds and thus, I strategized ie precisely plan an Orders to layout strategies and detail Attacking Plans - and thereon my immediate tasks were to focus on four areas - firstly settling all those outstanding issues in regard to the existing projects and or investments, secondly restructuring the LCDA to form a thin and lean organization and later moving for corporatization, thirdly embarking on real corporate culture of human resource development whereby I pushed LCDA culture to shift to be public interest corporate cultured organization and fourth aggressively lure and facilitate greater land development investment into Sarawak. The military discipline taught me to keep the staffs busy in order to push them to certain degree of discipline and productive working culture.
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(6) Analyzing LCDA weaknesses and strengths as an internal process was not easy. As I had said, LCDA was so compartmentalized so much so "suspicious, mistrust, reserve, to gain favor and eager for change" characters were intermixed within the seem to be calm glass of water. To identify and isolate all these characters and thus on how to manage them into productive strengths were really a damn tasks then. Fortunately, as Islam saying, if one's focus to one's good intent, Allah will always be there to extend His hidayah - helps. I then learnt the wisdom why Allah had created Satans, Angels and later men to serve Him. By all means, He needs none of them yet He made them be around. By the way, soup is never made of plain water but a mixture of so much spicy gravies. My strategy then was just pushed them to work and thereon I can see the pearls among the beads.
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3.2 Double Edges Sword:
First the Spring Cleaning Team. The team was headed by the then DGM supported by our Legal and Finance group. Their tasks were to identify all the key problematic investment issues and as quickly as possible suggesting on how to resolve all the related issues. They need to create the Master List of all those sick investments, critical issues and time schedule to work on the settlement matters and on weekly basis to brief or discuss with me on those. We pushed hard to cleanup whatever outstanding issues for smooth implementation of all our 
investments. To make LCDA presence immediately felt, we worked on branding, we initiated the changing of names of all LCDA investments - to a standard form - PELITA + JV Partner Name + Name of Place of investment eg PELITA-TH Gedong which signified a JV between LCDA and TH in a place called Gedong. This nomenclature gave LCDA, our partners and thus the local communities to acquire and have sense of pride and ownership of the investments. Accordingly, with this style of naming, indeed LCDA began to registered nodes all over the State and these nodes later were becoming much dense and broad spread all through. Our message was simple LCDA - with the Malay acronym of PELITA, which means a lamp is going to light up every corner of Sarawak. But our real reason was to register all those investments clearly succinct into our mind and easy for us to monitor them.
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(4) Indeed I have this one trick to make sure I missed not even one single long over due problematic Projects. Well as the CEO, being entrusted to clean every dust settling on the books, definitely among the staffs there would be some whom may feel scared to be found that they were among those whom had messed up things. I always kept this dilemma in mind. So what I did were, firstly I requested the related files be placed on my table with the longest problematic project on top. Normally I came to work very early ie around 0700 and I'd spent my first 45 minutes to study the file and later, since I normally left my Office around 2000-2100 hours, so I have time to relook at all those again after getting feedbacks from the relevant teams. Secondly I assigned those who seem reluctant to works as a team to come come up with whatever feasible solutions within certain time frame or frankly I told them to be out, and thirdly, I have my backup quiet team to work in parallel to the same team. I have one clear attitude over my staffs, either they perform or they must pack out. I clearly shown to them, I won't keep non-performers in cold storage as many did, I'll workout for them to exit soonest. How I got those done? The normal bureaucratic and or diplomatic process either too lengthy and exhaustive or won't work, but the military way - "you are fired strategy" proven to worked.
(5) LCDA indeed was quite a rich agency. It has lots of properties stock. Unfortunately, and in view of LCDA continuing receiving OPEX grant from the Government, therefore these assets were kept unproductive. We study their commercial marketability. We were not keen in disposing all these properties for we could see the locational distribution of these assets would help in nurturing business community development among the small and or new entry entrepreneurs. We made all these properties be known to the public through our website. By all means we managed to put all of them into income generating products. How did we managed to do such then? We looked at the Total Math of the whole things. Holding properties incurred cost - maintenance and security, so its eat into our coffer. The business in 2003-2005 was not that encouraging. We can't rent our properties to their "theoretical commercial values". Even if we want to sell, there were no takers to a good price. So we worked out with interested business community on the fair price that they can afford. Definitely we monitor their business progress and accordingly we adjusted the rental based on their business performance and affordability. No properties were then kept idled. We were able to monetize and liquidated all of our properties to money generating assets. By 2004, through rental Income, we managed to pool enough fund to finance our OPEX. By 2005, we happily informed the Government that we were able to stand on our own feet. Indeed my senior in the SPU whom than was the State Financial Secretary did called me up to his Office and put a challenge for LCDA to be self-financing within the next five years. Alhamdullilah we made it within three years.
(7) The very secret that we kept to ourselves, even despite many times Taib asking us who were the culprits to the delayment or messing of lots of LCDA-PHSB investments, our answer to him was - "It's OK, We will settle all those and In Shaa Allah we'll make sure those are not repeated". We took the attitude that we were there to do my works not to complain or worst passing the bugs around. We never revealed those not to protect them but, personally I learnt a lots from Hollywood crime and legal movies, we kept them as my sources of critical information and solution. Even if the mistakes were done by our staffs, we would just want them to rectify as quickly as possible or take the responsibility to leave. Indeed I love the spirit behind the movie - Airforce One (1997) acted by Harrison Ford. We must dare to make decision and take responsibility.
3.3 Working The Crystal Ball:
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(2) The fundamental objectives of LCDA among others is to facilitate in widening and enriching investment into the State. When Taib took over the State leadership in 1981, Sarawak was well known for among the most backward state in the Federation. Taib, I would believe whom took the realm of the State leadership along with Mahathir at Federal level, both were eager to push Sarawak and Malaysia into greater development pace. Mahathir was fortunate not only having lots of strong public agencies but better pool of talented human resources which enable him to move fast and far with his privatization undertaking. Sarawak very much devoid of such advantages. Thus, Taib's efforts then need to be a bit cautious than Mahathir. So he crafted agencies such as LCDA, STIDC, LMNS, SPB and many others, which were sort of quasi government. Wrt LCDA, its Ordinance gave the organization the authority to be "a government within the government". Since inception, and I believe to this very day, LCDA had played such role. All along, not only LCDA had helped to lure investments into the State but need to manage all those investments to the most professional. In order for LCDA to be successful then we believe was for LCDA to have strong culture of professional investment management; which I found out, the LCDA Human Resource Management & Development, HRM&D was not geared toward such functions and objectives.
(4) Therefore the HRM&D Division need to take stock and monitor the skills and abilities of the staffs in executing their responsibilities. All the gaps need to be closed and we spent good amount of fund to equip our staffs with all the necessary skills and capabilities. Staffs were given chances at the full expense of LCDA to upgrade their academic and skills qualification. It was our policy then particularly all the Senior Managers must hold post-grade degree and those involved in the plantation investment to acquire a Diploma in Plantation Management on top of the presence degree. It was compulsory for them to do full time Diploma course at recognized institutions locally and even in Malaya. Indeed all LCDA executives managing the plantation investment were qualified to be a field plantation managers. We did also make placement of our staffs to certain agencies and or corporate organizations for exchanges of skills and experiences. We exposed our staff to international level of management skills. We sent about 25 personnel to attend a two week crash special tailored course at Nanyang University of Singapore and about same number to understand and to mobilize Community Participation Progam with the UNDP in Bandung, Indonesia.
(5) A racing frog can't be kept forever under the coconut shell. It must be let to have free world to practice for skillful long jump and swimming endurance. The frog must be exposed to the real racing ground and challenges to make it a better racing creature.
(8) Indeed between 2003-2004, twice I was called up by Awang Tengah Ali Hassan, Taib's Second Minister for Resource Planning and Management whom also foreseeing LCDA. He told me Taib was not happy with our slow progress to change LCDA to much more efficient and aggressive to bring in greater investments to Sarawak. We can understand Taib's sense of urgency - the State from 2002 to 2011 was in dire need of fund - he wanted LCDA to pave a good example at least to be able to be independent and better if could help to build the State wealth. Our presumption, in 2002-2011 Sarawak was "in deficit" of I RM1.50 billion annually to take care of our "strategic investment" which caused "lots of development deficit" then. I did briefed Awang Tengah on all that we were working on. We were going all out to accomplish Taib's expectation. Indeed I was lucky but never took such as for granted, since student days Awang Tengah had known me and my hard pushy working characters. He was my two years senior in UKM. At any time I can talk straight with Tengah. I was also lucky for Taib's Permanent Secretary, Wan Alwi was the DO of Simunjan when I graduated in 1984. As a young ambitious graduate, I used to deal with him wrt the poor state of my Kampung then (1984). I had shown my dedication and honesty in bringing developments to my kampung and all those neighboring villages. I believe both Awang Tengah and Wan Alwi backed me that we need some more time to get things done the way they should be.
(9) In HRM&D matters, what we firstly did was to build and implant the conviction that our staffs presence in LCDA were to serve the State and her people to the optimum. Our very non-diplomatic punch to our staffs was "You guys applied to work here, you were engaged for such, so such should be your only concern and priority". They must serve the people to the very best demanded etiquette. Basically we tried to drive the whole organization to change their outlook and working attitude into the cost-effective corporate etiquette and surely be rewarded according to their capabilities and performances.
(11) To speedup the staffs privatization process, first we established a New Scheme of Service. Clear individual and organizational compensation path based on performance and capabilities were drawn together with the staffs. Then we placed all those LCDA staffs that were on EPF as well as those whom had reached their premature retiring ages and had also came to their salary barred status, they were all offered and transferred immediately to PHSB. About 80 per cents of LCDA staffs were facilitated with this move. The balanced 20 per cents all were due to the reason that they had not reach their bar salary movement and or had not reaching their full retirement benefit status. For them, we did our Performance Audit and shift the good scores to the PHSB with some compensation incentives provided to turn them into as good and productive as their PHSB counterparts. We avoided double standard treatment to the capable and hard working staffs. We were glad to report to Taib that his wish to get LCDA personnel be engaged on private sector basis was successfully complied without having to go through the long hassle of the Public Service procedures. We did it through creative and legal win-win arrangement with the staffs. Our New Scheme of Service was basically putting the Carrot infront of the Bull approach.
(13) Our key OOS focus areas were - first, the New Scheme of Service which was capabilities and performance-based - few books and journal were referred to arrived at this New Scheme of Service. We set a very clear KPIs and Score Marks for enumeration growth and year end bonuses. Secondly, Full Office Digitalization whereby we introduced full computerization and networking of our working system, revamping our Filing System following the SPU System which I had reformulated based on the EPU PMD System, and get rid of the conventional QCC Team and instead just developed Online Digital Work and Monitoring & Evaluation Procedures that are much personnel and clients friendly. Thirdly, we developed GIS-based Land and Properties Data Bank which was then linked to our Website for open investors viewing, assessment and development or investment proposal. Fourth, we then developed a much to Prevailing Industrial Standard KPIs Investment M&E System. Legally, technically and financially all of our investments KPIs were bounded to these standard industrial practices. For ease of operational, we discarded the ownership character of the QCC or TQM procedures for later, the fifth focus area that we embarked on was to make it a must for our people to work as strong multi-sectoral team where indeed then we introduced the Multiskilling and Multitasking Type of Work Culture. On the hind side, we realized that the external parties were fond of snatching our well trained personnel, as well as some were not able to catchup with our very demanding work culture, therefore the multi-skilling and multi-tasking was instrumentalized as our buffer in facing the potential brain drain. We worked on multi-talented personnel development system to beat the very harsh external thiefty forces.
(15) To get the staffs to understand this strategy, we used my simple analogy - when we take our meal, we never take rice alone or one dish after another. Our dishes normally made of at least 3-5 varieties. Even our variety mixed, we never took the same mixed all through our day. So when come to "eating, why are we so multitude, and yet when come to serving our people, we are so myopic". Personally as Muslim, we should have no difficulty to understand why multiskilling and multitasking was so important - that was the showcase by Muhammad SAW at his harsh time. He made himself and trained his followers to be "jack of all trades" despite in modern day William Shakespeare critique " A jack of all trades is a master of none" yet he put a caveat "often sometimes better than a master of one". Such an approach gave us lots of advantages. Among others, the key results were we were able to cushion against wrong doing in our tasks for over time those will soon be discovered once the rotation come to being; secondly we were able to develop multi-talented staffs which then gave us the advantage of keeping our organization thin and lean. External critic didn't realize, we indeed operating with same numbers of personnel since 2002 to 2011 but with much larger numbers of investments and projects in hand - at least 300 - 400 per cents higher than 2002; the only caveat, about 70 per cents of them were new recruit - why and how? All is about our Military & Samurai Strategy.
(16) Since we were having pool of well trained personnel, that was how we could then practiced multi-tasking and multi-skilling type of task assignments. And this type of working culture was our best discovery on how to keep the staff on toes in almost every tasks that we need to execute. Along the way, we did experienced losing our good personnel to certain agencies and even among our investment companies. We had no regret on these, for our HRM&D never stop building new talented and skillful personnel. Red flag indeed was raised many times by certain quarters over the high turnover of our executives - frequent resignation and sometime in big number. Lots of quarters believe, we would be suffering big blow and may failed in our course. We did felt the blow, but mostly on very short term basis. Just as I had said, I was a military trained person, in military we trained our soldier to ever ready to take on the vacated task as immediate as it is happening. Our HRM&D and exposure were well conceived to face such situation. Multiskilling, multitasking, good team work and clear working process were our best strategies to keep our LCDA sailing smooth. Indeed we also made our newly recruited executives to attend monthly and annual military training organized under the Pasukan Simpanan Tentera Darat - the PSTD - we pay great attention to espirit de corps buildup.
(17) I invested lot of my times initially to get all of our staffs to understand Strategic Planning, Management and KPIs and BSC formulation and detailing. To boost the staffs confident, we also sent them out to attend similar course externally and made them to compare what I did and what others were teaching them. Interestingly, most of them were proud being requested to present on how we in LCDA come to the building of BSC as the soul of our work culture.
3.4 Holding Our Heads Straight Up:
(2) From 2003-2005, the LCDA BoD and particularly Taib, "blocked" LCDA to undertake any new investment. Such indeed almost demoralizing the whole LCDA and in particular myself. Even some of our personnel did "spit" on my face, arguing - "So what new investments could you bring to LCDA? So far there is none and we are only managing que serra serra" - such really disturbed me deep into my soul, but I hold to my breath to take such as my greatest challenge. I knew, he said so not from his very head, but by shadows of some others whom knew I was going to "kill" them. With helps from Allah and those dedicated staffs, I would say we did made some good signs of strong come back by year 2004. Firstly, we managed to resolved those long nagging problematic and delayed investments and projects, secondly we managed to monetize our properties through aggressive and business facilitating marketing approach and thirdly we made serious move in restructuring our investment management despite slow progress. Accordingly by end of 2004, LCDA was able to generate own income to be self financing. Indeed from year 2005, the organization was free of the State financing. In one of the BoD Meeting, we presented the figures to Taib whom was the BoD Chairman, he reacted in great relief and was quite happy. Yet we can't get his blessing to expand our investment. Personally I was in deep puzzled then. (3) As far as Office Management housekeeping, we were on track and considered done. Since from day one, our approach of transformation and or restructuring was based on self analysis and self improvement, thus we can't get quick external advice on what hold us up on fast expansion of our new investment field. One crucial area that is outstanding and had been making turtle progress was the restructuring of our investments. We have too many subsidiaries dealing on overlapping business area. Most were earning marginal, nil or at lost. To some extend lots were dormant. I was having very serious psychological dilemma in facing these issues. Firstly I really don't have any idea on how to go about this. I read books on finance, but though for me to grasp fast. Secondly, lots of these subsidiaries, their BoD were among those very influential figures - politicians, businessmen and top civil servants. We were facing psychological serious deadlock.
(4) I figured out, without making good progress in our Corporate Restructuring, either I should make an exit or LCDA may suffer to be sidelined and or diminished. Basically, we were facing a do or die situation. But I can't be acting coward and or indifferent. Alhamdullilah, Allah is great. He helped me out. He gave me the psychological approach in how to handle Taib which I'll explain in section 4 hereafter.
(5) The Corporate Restructuring exercise seem look so complicated in the beginning and we were advised to take a consultant to get it done, but as I had said, we trusted our internal expertise built up. Nonetheless, by instinct we did requested for consultancy Technical Proposals in undertaking the exercise, and judging from their scopes of works, we figured out, all those could be internally done. I have senses, we are going to deal with many JVCs restructuring and buy over in the future. For this, internally we must have the experience and capacity to do all these by ourselves. Indeed this was the case with numerous JVCs that were not performing to the prevailing industrial standard.
(7) The original idea behind the establishment of these subsidiaries was for taxation leveraging. Sure there were also lots of other personal agendas as well. Tax leveraging objective sound "noble" yet not really the truth. We seem to make some gains from tax leveraging yet we spend more on non-productive operational cost. A lot of their existence were redundant. Indeed the existence of huge numbers of redundant subsidiaries placed unnecessary managerial cost to LCDA. Holding to huge numbers of redundant and or overlapping subsidiaries and investment entities entail huge resources exhaustion. We seem busy, not due to managing productive investment but subsidiaries and companies administration works. LCDA is a government entity, thus taxation leveraging could always be done easily and smooth even without the formation of huge numbers of subsidiaries.
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(9) Alhamdullilah. In the state of "serious mental block", one morning my heart moved me to call a good friend and asked for his time for tea. I rushed over to his Office and we poked fun on each other for we were both in same boat - tasked to restructure our public related business entities. He had worked on it a year ahead of LCDA and the progress was really turtle crawling. I explored on how he did it and who were the key people or agencies involved. Since LCDA is a government entity, so most of the matters will be dealt with the MoF. Based on such, we quickly organized ourselves and really sit down aggressively with the related MoF personnel. We did a face-to-face approach rather correspondences as practiced by my good friend's office. Alhamdullilah within two months after our audience, everything were approved and we go to LCDA BoD with the long list of all the subsidiaries to be consolidated and windup. With this exercise we turned LCDA corporate structure into really a slim and easy to control organization. Definitely we also presented the potential financial gains from the exercise. The matter was approved and with such, now all was left for me to deal with all those related personalities. I pulled myself together and stick my head up, as administrator to the principal shareholder, I issued lots of termination letters. That indeed was tough and made me stepped onto many toes. I created many silent enemies then - my image began to be labelled as Taib's Blue Eye Boy, which I never like it.
4. STRATEGIC PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH TO DEAL WITH TAIB:
I love this song by Abiet G Ade - tittled Untuk Kita Renungkan, which at times I was down or was restless, I would turn this song on and followed the soul touching and mind clarity impacting lyric.
Kita mesti telanjang dan benar, benar bersih
Suci lahir dan di dalam batin
Tengoklah ke dalam sebelum bicara
Singkirkan debu yang masih melekat
(One must be totally inside and outside pure)
Suci lahir dan di dalam batin
Singkirkan debu yang masih melekat
(One must be totally inside and outside pure)
Anugerah dan bencana adalah kehendak-Nya
Kita mesti tabah menjalani
Hanya cambuk kecil agar kita sadar
Adalah Dia di atas segalanya
(Success and failure are mere tests from Him)
Anak menjerit-jerit, asap panas membakar
Lahar dan badai menyapu bersih
Ini bukan hukuman, hanya satu isyarat
Bahwa kita mesti banyak berbenah
(Failure and miseries are just reminder for us to be truthful)
Memang bila kita kaji lebih jauh
Dalam kekalutan, masih banyak tangan
Yang tega berbuat nista
Tuhan pasti telah memperhitungkan
Amal dan dosa yang kita perbuat
Anak menjerit-jerit, asap panas membakar
Lahar dan badai menyapu bersih
Ini bukan hukuman, hanya satu isyarat
Bahwa kita mesti banyak berbenah
(Failure and miseries are just reminder for us to be truthful)
Memang bila kita kaji lebih jauh
Dalam kekalutan, masih banyak tangan
Yang tega berbuat nista
Tuhan pasti telah memperhitungkan
Amal dan dosa yang kita perbuat
(No worry for all the hidden dark hands, He will always be there for the truthful)
(2) Al Quran in Al Isra: 31 Allah promised: "Kill not your children for fear of want. We shall provide sustenance for them as well as for you". Kids are innocent creatures. Pure in their state. Do no harm to them. The above Abiet G Ade song lyric implies, if one heart and mind are as pure as the kids, Allah will always be there to care. In the Quranic verse, that is what it means by Taubah:51: " Nothing shall ever happen to us except what Allah has ordained for us. He is our Lord, Helper and Protector. And in Allah let the believers put their trust.” If one hold to these principle, nothing should turn one into inferiority and or superiority complex.
(3) Taib was a big man, big character, and definitely having big heart and brain. In Bujang Ulis description of Mahathir "a big man with big nose", a signal of "not to be fool around" - a scary figure. Then, Taib definitely not my dad, but still both were men of their own right. Similarity must be there somewhere. At my kid's days, my dad was "a kind" of a person. Less words, he spoke with his eyes, but once he spoke, it is an order and I must listen and totally .jfif)
abide. When I did something wrong or did not obey his instruction, his approach was simple yet succinct deep into my soul - he'll called me up, made me stand still like an army in an alert position - he seated down to his knee and starred at me either asking what have you done or not done. He never pointed out what soever my mistakes or wrong doing. He made me figured out by myself. First he starred and spoke with normal tone. Well as kid, my brain won't work that fast - usually my answer may takes time. Definitely his tone and starring intensified. His third time asking will be very scary. Damn scary. If I signed wanted to cry, he would pointed into my face and yelled "You must not cry!". And mom would rushed over. She will just pulled me aside and took me to the kitchen - her kingdom. One thing about dad, he will never cross my mom's throne - her kitchen. There mom would took over with articulating FBI or CIA or M16 interrogation and order for me to immediately correct what went wrong. Dad and Mom, they always be in buddy-buddy in dealing with my sibling, except looking back, I was the most focused "victim", which I never regret and praised them most.
(5) Most profounding, when Taib spoke "I just behave an innocent obedient kid" - listen, node and be deeply interested with fast thinking mind. Any disagreement, I just hold on till I have analyzed the whole things and I would bring back to him in our next discourse. Thus, dad-mom had prepared me well to have Taib along the way for me to serve to their wish. They trained me to have no fear, no favor, not passing the bugs and have gut to admit and correct thing the fastest. SubhanaAllah. But then, I yet to have white hair, all taken by Taib ( just not to be too serious).
5. ACTIVATING PHSB:
Lot of the time, we indeed not sure of either we were doing the right things and or the right way. Umar Al Khataab, among Muhammad SAW most trusted companions, his saying " in our act, our deed - intent niat, is key". Whatever we were doing and intent to do, all were with one clear objective - to deliver the best for the State and her people - to serve to His bestowed caliphate divine purposes onto us. Until to this end, our focus to activate PHSB which had been formed probably 8-10 years ago, personally I would say, even then I didn't realize was the very most strategic move. Firstly, PHSB resolved our HRM&D great inertia issue. PHSB gave us the tool to restructure our HRM&D and O&M structure and to keep and reward performers and accordingly fire those not to our standard. PHSB gave us all the freedom to get ourselves to our best purposes and structure.
(2) Secondly, and this is what I would say relief Taib so much. As I could said and observed, the 2002-2011 period was Taib's official and personal stressful period. My private audiences with him, sometimes turned myself into "stresses full as well". He needed lots of good people to rely on. He can't spare lots of his time to LCDA investments management. He seem wanted to leave LCDA operation fully onto whom he could trust. Frankly I lack the real cunning and aggressive corporate nerve as yet. Indeed he had wrongly picked me as I had strongly earlier objected on his choice.
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(3) LCDA was not in Taib's good book then. Lots of LCDA investments either not well managed or moving. LCDA delivery system failed his very aspiration of the organization. At least within 2003-2004, we and especially me was having a "block minded" first not knowing exactly what Taib was not happy with and even then we were really groping in hell darkness on how to get his wish done fast. I would believe, this was where the divine force coming in. Allah guided us to quickly activate PHSB. Now instead of LCDA, PHSB was to shoulder heavier responsibilities. LCDA to remain thin yet strong "godfather" and to take "behind the curtain mover". PHSB must be on the forefront, yet must be thin and lean as well. PHSB will seal LCDA from "all the potential repercussions". Very smart wisdom of Taib. So much so, indeed when we activated PHSB to take on the execution roles of the LCDA, ie the PHSB BoD now to play the vital roles to steer and monitor LCDA delivery system and performance, he then has less headache to deal with all the details of the LCDA. He can just focus on policies and priorities areas.
(4) We were lucky to have Aziz Husein whom then was the State Secretary as our PHSB BoD Chairman. My reading of him, definitely he was very well verse with the State policies, direction and priorities. As long as PHSB was operating within those radar, he has no problem to give a "go a head". Secondly, he didn't really be concerned about details, which were the responsibilities of the Management, he was more concern to "methodologies". Since our OOS had been well structured and endorsed by the LCDA and PHSB BoD, then our "methodologies" were considered transparent and always on Kaizen principle - revolving and continuous improving.
5. DIGITALIZATION OUR OPERATION:
From student's days till now, I have strong inclination to time series data collection, retrieval, processing, analyzing and presentation. So much so, computing was a subject that I was always interested in. Not on the technical part of it, but more on the application. Allah facilitated me well in my interest, when I wanted to do my post grade study locally in the Economic Degree, no local University was willing to offer me seat. Indeed such a blessing for He arranged for me to really see and feel the "most advanced computerized society". Yet when I applied overseas, out of the 15 that I applied none of them turned me down, but the I chose to do MURP and took economic as my minors. Interesting. Allah said, nothing is without His knowledge and purpose. I chose the World most advanced country and landed among most "tertiary educated population" and great environmentally friendly State of Colorado. Not only every things we have to deal with the computer, most important, the PCs were advanced, fast changing and relatively very cheap. Wifi access was easy, free and of very high speed.
(3). I came to LCDA in 2002, my expectation, being a statutory body, with much freedom in term of funding and decision making process, to my shocking their computerization was still individual stand alone PCs. Information Management was very poor. Lots were kept on manual basis. Things were mostly kept as hardcopies and disorganized. That was in 2002. We called SAINS to help wired and network our system the soonest. All executive then were provided with PCs, the Notebooks and "Nokia Pre-smart Phone".
(4) The main objectives of our Office digitalization were first to keep to just right manpower 
size. We don't need the traditional pyramid type of manpower structure. Better to have fat reverse diamond shape. Secondly, computerization will allow for people to work independently but well connected. This would allowed for greater works sharing and much efficient communication both in office and from the fields. Thirdly, the executive would be having much mobility freedom to inspect all the projects real field performance status and implementation issues and thus communicating all those information to the HQ for M&E. These network of information sharing and communication was very important for at the HQ level we used to be called to attend various ministerial level meetings and we must be ready with up to date information.
(5) It was proven from 2002 - 2011, LCDA and PHSB combine then maintained it HQ manpower strength to 104, but with very versatile multi-tasking and multi-skilling type of area of responsibilities. Integration of conventional computing system with those of GIS and Remote Sensi, LCDA comparatively to many others agencies, we then could move faster and get thing under better controlled. Many times Taib being querying me - "are you not over loaded", my always simple answer to him was "things are well monitored, evaluated and controlled, no worry In Shaa Allah we can do more". All because with the help of good Office Computing System. Personally I was inspired by what tyhe Al Quran saying in Ali Imran: 29 " Say, ˹O Prophet,˺ “Whether you conceal what is in your hearts or reveal it, it is known to Allah. For He knows whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. And Allah is Most Capable of everything.”
6. PUSHING AHEAD:
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(2) What had been happening in LCDA then? What had been practiced all along was mere projects planning and implementation per se. My first reasoning was due to high CEO turnover so much so, not much time were given to undertake strategic thinking and direction setting. Then the second very important factor, I would think then was all due to what I perceive as "Taib being the Master, he did all the master planning, the rest should just get all those done". The joke then I used to hear was - the most important were the Master's Plans - just comply to it and forget about the Masterplan. Well based on time and situation, I would say Taib has all the reasons to adopt such an approach then, but as time changed and lots of things were intertwined and very complicated, the nature and people expectation of the Government had also becoming much pressuring and diversified. A much systematic business master planning have to be done. Our 2003-2005 exercises did indicated our strong corporate weakness areas and yet on the hind side, those also had exposed ourselves on how to get things organized the better way - we need strategic business planning and management be in placed - this must be part and parcel of our OOS and O&M corporate system.
6.1 Spatial Development Planning and M&E:
(2) Secondly as part of our effective M&E and OOS development, we embarked on developing our Geographical Information System (GIS) Database. Through our good network with L&S, DoA, Forestry and the SPU, we built strong GIS database on all Major Land Developments, Land Tenures, Infrastructures, Agriculture Land Suitability, Key Resources and Environmentally Sensitive Areas, and all our own Land Bank and Development Areas. Our GIS team were all home grown. Personally I spent lots of my time guiding them on developing the digital parameters for ease of spatial planning and monitoring. I was trained under Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) at Asian Institute of Technology, AIT Bangkok in 1992 and MACRES Kuala Lumpur on how to applied GIS and Remote Sensing in Spatial Development Planning and Monitoring. I trained both the SPU and LCDA GIS personnel based on my training and hand on experiences.
(3) Our strategic view on these NCR development was to get to the agglomeration of economies. We must organize our investments to the level whereby economic of scale matter to facilitate for the investors to co-exist and strongly complementing and supporting each others - sharing of roads, drainage, logistic and even processing and marketing. The State initially gave us pockets of land all over the places. I would say "political biasness" was key to
such action. Those were not to the investors favor and even to the Central Place Centripetal regional development theory advantages. The anticipated great trickling socio-economic effects would not be achieve to the optimum. Therefore we helped the State to identify new areas to fill up all the gaps - basically we helped L&S and the Ministries to speed up land alienation to us. Then we pushed everybody hard and really facilitated the high performers to be given more land to develop. Not only we care for the NCR, we also give due attention to those neighboring Stateland as well as smallholders owned land. Despite LCDA gain nothing and indeed eating into our OPEX, we helped agencies such as FELCRA and MPOB to help organizing smallholder landowners to be part of the bigger Plantation Agglomeration that we were aiming for. We worked to bundle all these resources as Investment Agglomeration. For record, based on capacity and performances basis, we had made lots of entities to grow very fast. To quote among them were SOP, TaAn group, RH group, KTS group, WTK group and even Tabung Haji. We helped even many of the small estates to grow fast and big.
6.2 Making Our Land Bank and Properties Profile Transparent:
(2) Our GIS database not only was great for planning and monitoring purposes, but its also useful for our marketing purposes. The System was able to integrate locational, statistical, qualitative and even photographic information for ease of assessment. My personal conviction to digital-based work culture is due to my believe that Allah the Al Mighty _ "He get things done, well managed and monitored all are through His "super AI - Almighty Intelligence"" sort of our today AI. Allah's governance could expand not on exponential basis but hypersonic based all due to His AI capacity. So why can't we His best and most trusted creation take the same course? Such may sound khurafat infidel to some, but I'm not equating Allah super power to anything else, but to emulate on how best to exercise our role as His caliph on this earth. Secondly, why then did Allah gave Al Khawarizmi the 780-850 AD Muslim polymath the idea about the Algorithm which formed the basis to digital technology and not to say Archimedes 287-212 BC the great scientist of the Greek? Indeed I'm wandering to this day, how could Muhammad SAW memorized all those long Surah or Ayat of the Al Quran just within a shot span of time through the Holly Ghost? Sure, lots of Muslims will say, all because Allah has that Kun Faya Kun power. I never denied the Al Mighty superiority, my only concern was how could we copy Him for good and doesn't He had given us all we need to move on our own?
6.3 Standard Format and Procedure of Investment Proposal and Evaluation:
Toward end 2005, Taib opened the flap gate for LCDA to quickly drew in massive investments. With our opened online Land Bank System, we were over whelmed with lots of investment proposals. By 2007 we managed to get almost all of those land assigned to us gearing for development. Along the way, we also managed to get lot more of land banks. In order to facilitate massive interests to invest into the State we then developed standard format and procedure for Investments proposal. We were really serious to avoid as much as face-to-face potential of bias treatments among our staff to the investors. Secondly, by having this open investment accessibility and proposal system, we were able to receive lots of good proposals for us to decide on. We no more receiving proposals from only those whom we met or we knew. With all these the market were pleased with us and thus the matter definitely came to Taib's knowledge. We let the public to do PR for us not the other way round as the Malays' proverb saying "Masuk bakul angkat sendiri" - "self promotion". Good or bad, we leave those to the market to judge - we then undertake Kaizen Strategy to be better.
(2) Accordingly, internal committees were setup to properly evaluate the proposals and even to do ground verification on the proponents real capacities and performances. In regard to realities investment, our planning staff were to be closely involved at the projects design stages. This was to ensure all the LCDA and State interest were well taken care, and accordingly to equip our staff with hand on experiences. We adopted Guided-Capitalism project planning concept in most of our realities investments. We can't be allowing our cities be built on pure capitalism greed.
6.4 Stringent Investment ROI Calculation and Legal Framework:
In the plantation sector, particularly wrt the oil palm industry, Malaysia is world renowned for its most advanced expertise in the industry know-how. Malaysian oil palm industrial standard had been well established and considered as the world benchmarks. For that matter, our investment in the sector should comply or matchup to such prevailing standard. Any significant lower than such standard, then LCDA must have all the right to get its partners to immediately rectify all the problem areas. Indeed I learnt this from a Senior Plantation Advisor, Azaki Abdul Kadir, from Sime Darby whom by coincident was my senior in Kuala Krai, Kelantan way back in 1973-75. As trustee to the Government and the people, LCDA couldn't be seen to have high tolerance in any incompliance. For this to be properly adhere and enforceable, all our JV agreement must be drawn along a very watertight legal arrangement. The physical and financial performance KPIs must be drawn according to the need to comply to the prevailing industrial practices and standard.
(3) Indeed most of LCDA return on almost all of its business dealing were based on clear mathematical formula that everybody need to comply. These included the mining and forest total harvesting. We worked with all the related agencies to arrived at all of these formula. Our return on all these undertaking, I would say was to our best advantages - to the optimum values.
(4) All investors were given access to our calculation formula, M&E and key legal clauses for every sector of business dealing with us. The basic tenet behind all these was to get only genuine investors to come in and also to speedup all the proposal evaluation processes.
7. OUR UNIQUE APPROACHES IN BREAKING THOUGH AREAS:
(2) I would believe, without the 1981 Global Oil Crisis and prolonged Middle East war and later 1997 Financial Crisis our absolute poverty status would had zerorize by 2010 or so. Nonetheless despite the Crisis, we managed to make impressive progress to year 2017. But the question was, why despite our low absolute poverty level, there was that chaotic political noise then? In deed poverty was not the issue, greed to be in power was the actual case so much so poverty was being used to push for certain quarters course. The key issues then was uprising cost of living. The people began to feel the Relative Poverty Effect of IMF related financial prescription adopted by the Government then especially wrt increased in Financial Rate and reduction of NPL status from six to three months period. In 1997 Relative Poverty rate was at 19.7 per cents and increased to 20 per cents in 2000. By 2016 the rate dropped to 15.9 per cents but climbed back to 16.6 per cents in 2022. Cost of living were rocketing, people loosing jobs and Ringgit value plummeting. Those were complicated to explain, thus the easiest is to make great noise on poverty and surely drumming on corruption, cronyism and nepotism. Those were the most effective and catchy slogan in those days.
(3) As I said, since these corruption, cronyism and nepotism were gaining great momentum in Malaya, the grand opposition plan then was to bring down Mahathir and his BN Government. Thus, Taib was not spared. For such, that was the very reason, at the SPU level we initiated the Socialization Study to really have a feel of the people perception then. The Federal Government Budget from 1998-2005 was very tight then, while Sarawak due to its "Non Productive Strategic Investment" which taken up almost 50 per cents of the State revenue from 2002-2011, so much so we was also in a very dire situation. Less money was made available to do new development. Current expenditure was used mostly to cover the OPEX and very less CAPEX.
7.1 Waking the Elephants:
(2) As I said above, 2003-2005 was really a thrilling period for LCDA. We can't really move forward fast. But luckily, personally I knew lots of good plantation operators. I knew quiet a number who really want to get land in Sarawak. In the Malaya side, land are no more cheap and to get a contiguous even 5,000 acres or equivalent to 2,000 hectares of land is very difficult. Sarawak can still offer 3,000 - 7,000 hectares pieces of land at probably 20-30 per cents of Malaya price. Quietly I have a list of undeveloped plantation areas that these investors could and were willing to buy over in case need be. Secondly, I was fond of time serries data gathering and analysis. I had been following the CPO price cyclical trend ie for
every 10 years, there would be a peak point before next dipping and swing up again. I told all our JV partners that we must push hard now since the lowest price cycle had been registered in the year 2000 and by 2003 onward till 2010 the upward trend would be happening and may be 2011-2015 we would be enjoying good CPO price. By then all our efforts begin fruiting progressively. We also promised to help out with all the local social issues related to the Project area. Last but not least, despite LCDA couldn't provide any guarantee to any JVC commercial borrowing, we were happy to help to convince the bank wrt socio-economic and political feasibility of the Project.
(3) We made all our partners to move and get all those land given to them be developed fast and properly. We go through the development finance, budget and expenses carefully to track potentiality of "under the carpet game play". We noted there were some investors whom would exploited the CPO Price Upward Trend for quick gain dealing. These investors love just to get land for "land banking" purposes rather for real developments. We want to curb this type of investors. We need long term good dan rewarding companions.
(4) To make a sleeping elephant to move was not a light task. Either the elephant ignored you or he may turn mad and crush against you. Worst almost all of them were "pampered local elephants." Yet, by all meant, we and personally I made it clear to every investors, LCDA means business. Any whom can't comply to the conditions of the Land Lease given by the Government, they must be humbly withdrawing themselves. We made such called loud and clear in the JVC Board Meeting - big or small investors, we treat everybody professionally equal. Indeed the way we treated our staff, thus was the approach how we dealt with our partners. We don't practice back scratching. You are good, we stay as partner, failing which, please make an exit.
(6) There were some noises grumbling over my favor for Malaya-based plantation developers. Certain quarters were not happy with it. There were anonymous letters circulating accusing me of certain malpractices. When confronted with such accusations, as long as I never get involved in it, my treatment was simple - first I let my senior and managers to know about the accusation and put a small note advising them not to even have a thought to be involved about it and secondly, we'll facilitate for for the BPR, now MACC to come in and check. Wrt to binging in Malaya-based planters, my argument with Taib then was "We need real professional plantation developers to show our local the right way in developing and managing our plantation". My observation then was, most of our land had been given to big 11 timber men, whom were very raw in the plantation business, judging from their Management, Farm Layout and Budgeting - they were still too far from the prevailing industrial standard. Element of competition and showcase mut be injected into our system. Taib agreed. As such along the way, we brought in TH, Sime Darby, IOI and all those smaller public listed entities to provide the showcase. We helped our good local operators to expand fast - among them were SOP and TaAn.
7.2 Pursuit for NCR Land Development:
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(3) Among NCR land development, there were great social and political resistance among the target group. Not only they were poor, but illiterate so much so they were easily political manipulated. The Federal level political chaotic had infiltrated the rural Sarawak. Wining their trust becoming our most focus strategy, but how? Indeed the then government strategies imposed upon LCDA were the greatest deterrent to the success of the NCR development. Taib was adamant about his policy direction, yet to us that was the great wall to success. Alhamdullilah, Allah has never left me alone. First at kid times, my family used to have lots of the Iban friends. They used to stay at our place or even borrowed our land to plant paddy. Such association acquitted me with their culture and dialect. I visited almost all the long houses that participated in the NCR projects. I talked in Iban. My Iban was very economical - precise and straight to the point. That make them appreciated what came out of my mouth compare even with their ownself. I convinced them from my heart and simple logic that they can understood. They, to me are very simple folks - they want to be thoroughly and honestly consulted. For such reason, was why we sent about 25 personnel to learn on how to get people participation in communal-based type of development with the UNDP Bandung. I knew, UNDP had lots of great programs in the Philippines, Indonesia and even Indochina that were very successful in view of great community-based close consultation approach. I read a lots about how they did their works.
(6) If oil palm development can't proceed within the NCR land, then I would say, the Plantation Agglomeration intent that we conceptualized won't work. The clean State land were limited due to the need to conserve 70 per cents of our land as Forest Area. Most of the State land outside the NCR and Forest areas had been committed and under development but not at the pace as the State had wanted due to "NCR claims disturbance". While my staffs were busy doing all those works especially within the 2005 year, daily I spent my time to study the NCR distributional map, poverty stricken areas, updated prevailing plantation development areas, and current and future infrastructure networks - and as usual I will drive to undestine places alone watching all those that Allah had created. Indeed this was the very big issue when I was assigned to coordinate the IADP Kalaka-Saribas Project funded by the ADB in 1986-1996. Similarly while serving the R&DO Bintulu I was not spared from working out on how the private sector should deal with both the State policy and people "right". One night, sitting alone at home while enjoying to soft soothing music, Allah gave me an idea.
(7) I Made an appointment to see Taib specifically on this NCR development matter. First I presented to him the poverty stricken areas. Then the rural infrastructures and utilities development disparity. Those by default seem to be among the most noisy political areas. Thirdly I summed up the annual and over the 1990 - 2000 expenses the State need to dish out to support the so called poverty eradication programs. The figure was huge. Purposely I didn't workout the 2001-2010 figure, for I knew, Taib as a smart leader, he will traject the figure and could see his future difficulty in fulfilling such demand. Accordingly, I worked out how much the State would gain from a hectare of an oil palm development - at OER 20% and Average Yield of 20 Mt/ha/yr at 5% Cess Tax and average price then was RM2,500.00/Mt. The figure would be net RM500.00/ha/yr to the State Government. By 2020, the State is targeting to have 2,000,000 hectares of productive Oil Palm Plantation which would contribute about RM1.00 billion of Cess Tax. In 2002, total whole Sarawak oil palm developed areas was around 500,000 hectares which contributing about RM200.00 million of Cess Tax. Therefore based on the prevailing figures, Sarawak need to have at least 2.20 million hectares of oil palm area to earn RM1.00 billion Cess Tax annually. Out of those 2.20 million hectares and to avoid international marketing issues, 60-70 per cents of the areas must come from the NCR land. Yet as an overall by 2000, all through the State by all related agencies, we hardly having about 50,000 hectares of NCR related oil palm area. Therefore within 2005 - 2020, we need to push hard to get 1.30 million hectares of new NCR related oil palm area amounting to 80,000-100,000 hectares annually. Within our then land policy, no way we could move even to achieve 5,000-10,000 hectares annually.
(9) I would believe, our good achievement in NCR development then was due to the dedication that our executives to willingly sacrificing at least two weeks per month to be with the people and the investors to be on the ground to help out on all social issues with the rakyat. Personally I was not hesitate to be on the ground with them in lots of the difficult areas - be it with the rakyat, the investors and or inter agencies requirements to back them up. I understood, in a war, the soldiers spirit would always be kept high if the general were around not to fight but to provide the needed moral support. We also dare to be not politically "favored" especially among the local politicians - as we believe the end of the day, the people would be happy and they would then harvesting the good names.
(10) Personally, I believe the people, the State and LCDA would benefit the best into the future if LCDA could manage this NCR development brainchild of Taib's. He was smart in getting the private sector to be the mover, but in next 60 years ie after the expiry of the JVCo, the people and LCDA would be very matured and they could organized themselves better. Taib, to my reading, he was a "philosophical politician", the "hot hard headed one", if one understand of such was his very attitude, the rest was easy sailing with him. Taib's policies objectives need lots of strengthening and polishing strategies.
7.3 Balancing Act - the Ladang Rakyat:
While we paid great attention to pursue the NCR land development, not merely looking at the statistic per se ie based on our annual statistical achievement we had made much progresses comparatively to our past years; inter ethical distribution of our efforts seem not balancing. The NCR development created great benefits to landowners to the midland and interior of Sarawak. Those on the coastal fringe, in view of their past profession as settled farmers and fishermen, land grabbing was not really their interest. So much so, they were happy with small piece of land that was sufficient to support their subsistence type of enterprises.
(3) Not to side "stupidly" with the government of the day, I would believe, then the government need to have such land development approach was due to numerous factors. Firstly, commodity-based development on estate basis was not a practices among our smallholders. They yet to have the know-how and financial capacities. Secondly the processing and marketing network for commodities-based agro-industries was still not there. Thirdly, definitely infrastructure support services were very poor then. Last but not least, almost all the government agencies that were formed to help out, they relied heavily onto the public funding. Accordingly they can't operate on commercial cost-effectiveness mode. Indeed, the main reason for establishing such agencies was not accomplished accordingly. Forever they needed to be subsidized seeming just as the poor people that they should care for.
(4) Allah blessing, He gave us the idea, we can't be handling those noises just purely from a good Public Relationship approach - talked, explained and befriend them. Those were the normal norms then - political approach. Well those seem to work at election times, but the recurrent will always be there later and could be much fierce. We deployed political economic development approach. So, our GIS and Remote Sensing expertise really helped. With aerial photo to back us up, personally I went to beg Taib to let the people to have those remnants of land by their nose to farm. He agreed and with a condition, LCDA must make sure those land would be well developed and create great benefit fairly among the related communities. Now he passed the ball to us. Smart leader. So what are we going to do. The land were considered not worth to workout under the NCR and even private JV concept. Economic of scale was the key issues.
(6) With this Ladang Rakyat modus operandi, LCDA then was given lots of areas from Samarahan in the South to Lawas far up in the North to be developed together with FELCRA to name a few - Kg Baru, Samarahan; Ensengei Melayu, Simunjan; Igan, Dalat; Rh Asam, Sibu, Punang, Lawas; etc. To recognize FELCRA dedication and openness to our approach, we also passed on some State Land to them as a private JV. We modified, strengthened and expand Taib's NCR development with Ladang Rakyat model.
7.4 Sago Plantation Development:
(2) LCDA was entrusted to do sago plantation (washed blue in the map attached to the left) way before I joined the State service. When I resumed duty as young officer at the SPU to assist in agriculture and rural development planning and management in 1986 I did made a visit to these plantations somewhere in 1990. To my surprise, when I report duty to LCDA in 2002, I urgently made a visit to the same plantation and I saw nothing had changed. I requested for the plantation management to provide me with the comprehensive development plan of the sago industry, there was none. What they have was a Plantation Layout dan Implementation Plan. Sad to say, all along LCDA had no vision and clear direction wrt the sago industry. They did the plantation for the State wanted it and fund was provided. From 1981 to 2002, 21 years had past. By right, based on local farmers experienced and agronomic research by DOA and even CRAUN the SPV created to champion in sago industry development, the plantation should have been in production for at least 3-5 years. So far nothing much was there.
(3) What went wrong? First and foremost excuse was, there was no reference on how to develop sago on plantation basis. There was indeed another sago plantation undertaking at Pulau Besar, Rhiau, Indonesia. The plantation was driven by a former Senior DoA Sarawak researcher with funding came from a logging company from Singapore. The plantation was developed on rather shallow peat which seem to be regularly flushed with salt water flooding due to the locality close to the sea. Yet the 15,000 hectares sago plantations in Mukah was developed on very deep (more than 5 meters) peat area. Nonetheless, interestingly, CRAUN which was established almost at the same time with the establishment of the plantation and having three R&D stations at DoA Semengok, Samarahan and Sg Talau, Dalat - yet they also can't figure out the real understanding of sago agronomic on deep peat soil. Personally as a Botanist whom love the subject of ecology, my observation on all these stations, the Rhiau Plantation, our smallholder farms in Mukah-Dalat and even those sago areas in Malaya and South Thailand, all of those good growing and productive sago areas were within shallow to alluvial soil in nature. Within the Bau, Lundu and Sri Aman hinterland, sago are found at the fringe of the paddy field by the foothills. Sago farmers in Mukah and coastal Sibu-Sarikei, they planted the sago on alluvial soil along the river bank.
(7) I had written many articles on this commodity in my blog ABC Sadong. On 13/1/2011 I wrote - A snap shot on prospect of sago; 6/4/2011 - Sago pancake is our traditional pizza; 7/4/2011 - Sago - second to coconut in traditional usefulness; 4/2/2013 Rumbia- pilihan yang harus diambil berat; 5/3/2016 - Rumbia atau sagu - emas yang tercampak jadi makanan babi sahaja; 1/6/2018 - Sago - Allah blessing that Sarawak and Malaysia had ignored; 4/5/2023 - My gift to be for the nation - sagu sadong; and 1/6/2023 - Ridley Sago. Sago belong to the Palmae family. The plant is well distributed within the tropical and subtropical of the world. Papua and Papua New Guinea are home to a contiguous large tract of natural sago area. In both region, there is an estimated of about 10.00 million hectares of natural sago.
(10) Large tract of salty and brackish riverine land particularly along the Sibu-Igan-Rajang Basin, Mukah-Dalat-Daro Basin and Kabong-Pusa-Maludam Basin I would say based on my observation in Papua New Guniea, Papua and those Far East Indonesian Islands, these areas should be dedicated into sago plantation development. There were serries of R&Ds done to check on the salty clay tolerance of the sago palms as compare to the oil palm and many other crops. Sago planting in these areas would incurred less cost and much sustainable enterprises. As I has said, since now the nipah palm sugar is getting very popular and the nipah palm sugar price had shooting sky rocketing over the past five years ie from RM1.00/kg (2000) now fetching RM12.00/Kg and expected to increase further. LCDA broad experiences in managing broad oil palm development in the Sarawak could easily now be directed toward much successful in sago development.
(11) Dr. Isao NAGATO (1896 -1994) was a great lover of Sago, born in Shimane Prefecture, Japan. Right after graduating from Agricultural College of the Imperial University of Tokyo (presently Faculty of Agriculture, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology), he moved to Java Island, where he was employed as a technical staff by Nangoku Industrial Company Ltd., 
which was managed by a Dutchman. He was assigned to farm operations, including cultivation of various tropical crops such as coffee, rubber, cacao, tea and other commercial crops. Through those operations, he acquired practical skills of crop farming and farm management. After World War II, he emphasized the importance of research on tropical agriculture, and strenuous efforts were made to establish the Japanese Society for Tropical Agriculture as its core member. The major subject of Dr. Nagato’s research work in his later years was concentrated to the sago (insertion above is the natural sago forest in Sepik Marshland in Papua New Guinea) palm plant. He believed that the sago palm should be the most important tropical plant resource producing starch, which could contribute to resolving the possible food crisis of the world in future. In 1981, he established the Japan Fund for the Sago Palm Research Promotion at his own expense to financially assist sago palm researchers, including research groups of college students. Isao Nagato, to the furtherance of the work, in that he went so far as to sell his personal property to establish the Japanese Sago Fund to support the necessary research. His view is that sago is a crop that ‘can save mankind from starvation and the earth from devastation‘. He then organized and financed lots of International Sago Symposium to spread the knowledge and interest over the crop.
(12) Sarawak was honored to organized First International Sago Symposium on 5-7 July 1976 with the theme - The Equatorial Swamp as a Natural Resource. I attended the 8th Sago International Symposium at Jayapura, Papua on 4-6 August 2006 - Sago Palm Development and Utilization and the 9th International Sago Symposium at the Visaya State University, Philippines on 19-21 July, 2007 - Its Potential in Food and Industry. The 15th ie the latest 
Symposium was held in Kuching on 23-26 Sept., 2024 - Unlocking the Potential of Sago Palm - Towards Sustainable Food Systems and Environmental Restoration. The only set back that I could see, is that sago lack the champion to turn the crop into great commodity and thus diversified industrial products. All due to the fact, I would say, the LCDA "failure" while there are great land tenure issues in both the Papua, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea that deterred everybody interest in the development of sago. Reading through those list of papers presented in these International Sago Symposium since 1976 to 2024, tones of them, non I would say was on how to industrialize sago development. Great if someone could compile all these Papers and to look at those and formulate Investment Plan for the industry. I did prepared this in 2004 if not mistaken and accordingly bought over good piece of land in Dalat for and Integrated Sago Industrial Development Park - intended to be Flour, Methanol, Maltodextrie, Industrial Glue and Sago Fiber-based animal feed and fuel pallet mills. My conceptual plan for this Dalat Integrated Sago Industrial Park is modelled along the Integrated Petrochemical and or Integrated Palm Oil & Waste Utilization Industrial Park. I won't know what happen to such an idea now after I left by end of 2011.
7.5 Properties and Urban Development:
Malaysian cities, big or small, all over, socio-economically are very polarized. Why? It is the very nature of the Malaysian economy since its formation. At the Western colonization period, particularly in Malaya, in the beginning they brought in the "slaves" from China and India. Just like in the early day of the Western invasion of the North America, they brought in the Chinese to do their railways. In Malaya they were the West Industrial slaves - in mining, plantation, trading etc. Over times, then came the Chinese traders and some graduated as entrepreneurs along side with the West. The natives due to educational, skill, language, social and even religious barriers, either they being pushed or secluded to the rural fringe.
(3) Seeing what is happening in Malaya especially in states such as Penang, Selangor, Johore, Malacca, Negeri Sembilan and even Perak, in the 1960s, this dichotomy socio-economic structure was "acceptable" except in when the new generation "realization" particularly in 1972, it was a big socio-political issue. Sarawak is fortunate at least say may be for another 15-20 years ahead, we can still enjoy pleasant "peaceful economic progresses". We have small population. Our land is big. Our economies can provide good cake for everybody to share. My judgement, as long as the State revenue is good and the government is able to dish lots of public development and welfares, her people would be very happy. Yet time will come, and such is normal worldwide, economic equitability will no more be measured along traditional satisfaction but individual pursuit, so much so I would say our present urban economic structure is not moving into the long term harmonize social-wellbeing. Indeed the rural-urban migrants native are beginning to feel the pinch of deepening and structural income gap issues. The new working class are having serious problem to own good homes within good neighborhood and or to start a business.
7.6 Managing the Squatters:
In the plantation development we have to face the challenge on how to manage the "NCR land claims". While in properties development, especially when involving the State land, we definitely will have to deal with the squatters.
(2) Our first squatters challenge was in regard to Telaga Air, Kuching and Awat-Awat, Lawas rural transformation projects. As far as the Government was concerned, they don't deal with the squatters. Government was not interested to create precedence to be lenient with squatters, yet they wanted the projects to proceed accordingly. LCDA got stuck in between the people and the Government. My R&DO and SPU experienced thought me great alternatives. I was lucky for Telaga Air since the Project was under my purview while I was in the SPU. Such was the first Project that was assigned to me to handle. So I knew the Ketua Kampung since 1986. Through him I made arrangement with the contractor on how to handle the squatters. For the Awat-Awat, Lawas, I have a good friend whom was my UKM junior as the DO in Lawas. Through him and the contractor, then we settled the squatters problem.
(3) In pure private sector undertaking, where we need to face the squatters, we deployed simple business Mathematic. Firstly we designed most feasible profitable venture. Then we calculated the best potential NPAT gain. Accordingly we undertook thorough Households Profiling Census of the affected squatters. We get to their precise details and expectations - especially wrt their working places, location of their kids commuting schooling places, utilities supplies and cost etc. From such information, we look for potentials public low cost housing that could matched their affordability and social needs. There and then we worked out with the developers, based on our projected NPAT figure, how much could we spared for their evacuation. Normally we offer "much better figure" than if the matter was undertaken purely from the Government or capitalistic developers perspective.
(5) My most memorable case was on how to handle the BinaMas Padungan Squatters issue. It was closed to GE 2008. We got note that the properties owners within the areas were not happy with the presence of longing aggressive vandalizing squatters in the area. LCDA was having one good development there as well and was a bit affected. We were instructed to clean up the state land squatters affected area. Unfortunately, the exercise was not well concealed to the effect the squatters came to know the matter in advance prior we could deployed a good acceptable strategy. They turned much aggressive. I was then approached by an opposition leader and blasted me with "very hurting accusation". In the market then I was been marked as "Taib's blue eyes boy". Well, that politician might thought I was a normal.jfif)
politically naive Civil Servant Administrator - very lacking in political acuteness. I was not. I read books on politic since I was 14 years old and in the University I was a very active "political student". While in the US, I love to follow the Hard Talk serries. Well, I let him say whatever he wanted to say, just listened and invited him to finish all the fruits and drink that we served him. Then I just said to him few things: "First our census found out, all of these squatters are people from rural areas. They are not your voters. They maintained their original voting places. They are not "permanent squatters". They are rotational in nature ie they stayed there for 6 - 12 months, after they got proper works, they moved out and being replaced by another group just for temporary settling. Now we are arranging them either to go back to their Kampung or move to Public Low Cost Housing. How we do it, that will be strictly our arrangement with them and you will hear no noise from them anymore. I bet, by the coming SE 2008, all the properties owners there will not vote for you or I'll let the squatters to come back. I bet you love them to be there forever so that all those properties' owners to be with you to be anti Government." I then led him to the lift speechless. We handled the whole squatters there and then in the most silent move. Again - money talk. The capitalist can't take all of the bread, some nice pieces should be shared among others.
7.7 Sand Extraction and Logging Concession:
LCDA was called in to help regulate sea and river sand extraction statewide. The practice then was, each river system, a separate Subsidiary was established to take care on valuation, monitoring and enforcing of sand extraction. In 2002, we had 11 subsidiaries in doing the same business all over the State from Sematan to Lawas. Accordingly, each river system, they had different pricing mechanism. Rajang was the cheapest with Kuching the highest to the effect, Sibu sand were mined and sold at cheaper price in Kuching and elsewhere. As business entities these local extraction contractors, to ensure profitability, they either cheated on the tonnages extracted or they did illegal extraction. The much absurd, contractors sometimes were given overlapping extraction area. The effect was all of them will fight over the most rich sand areas to the extend those created over extraction and thus causing river bank erosion and many others environmental problems.
(2) LCDA was then not making good name in this business operation. Some serious malpractices come to my knowledge. What we did was we organized our Engineers, Quantity Surveyor, Finance and Legal persons to work on the Extraction Formula, Pricing and Terms that could be used by all to determine the Sand Volume Extraction Prospect and to use such standard in imposing the Extraction Royalties. This was not a straight engineering and Mathematical works, lots of factor had to be taken into account - tide schedule, water level, raining period factors, local social activities, machineries capacity, distance etc. Time series data we gathered and simulated. It took us six months to observe all the interaction of all these factors before we could simplified all those into workable Mathematical Formula.
(4) The same was applied in doing clear forest harvesting within our plantation designated areas. Except we have a little bit leniency to our JV partners. Based on capacity and need, we would grant the Permit to harvest the forest to our JV partners to ensure proper felling phasing and scheduling in line with the Plantation development phasing. Accordingly, some of these timber were useful for our infrastructure and plantation housing development. Nonetheless they had to comply to our agreed Standard Procedure and Royalty Payment.
7.8 Pursuing the BICC:
The very weaknesses of our economic structure since colonization to present indeed the missed representation of our population in all sectors of the economies. The natives either are flooding the public service and or smallholding farming while their non-native counter parts are dominating the commercial and industrial sectors. Both at the national, state and even local level, such imbalanced is glaring and in the long run wouldn't be healthy to the inter-racial harmony living. In the 1980s to 1990s, the Government was very serious in trying to address this issue. A program called Bumiputera Industrial and Commercial Community BICC development was introduced. Almost all public programs must have this component be built in. Nonetheless due to all sort of failures and wastages, the Government through the Permodalan Nasional Berhad and all the GLCs undertook the program from a collective rather individual perspectives. Through the ASB, TH and many other trust fund organizers, the natives' participations were organized based on shares subscriptions and the fund be managed by all the related trustees.
(2) While such strategy had improved over the native collective wealth pools, individually especially among the the small independent enterprises, such won't help much. Accordingly, 
wealth distribution intra-racial becoming the next emerging issue. These groups of (Inserted photo to the left - the old Kubahria, how much could the stall operators could make from such a premise?) entrepreneurs, while they have their entrepreneuring spirit, they were hard up of funding to acquire good businesses premises. Certain facilitation need be organized for them. Through the local government, lots of stalls - for basic stuffs sales are provided by the government, yet again those are limited and are confined to small numbers of the natives. The natives need to be facilitated in larger business participation. We had a view that the natives especially within their neighborhoods and urban centers they must be facilitated to go into bigger and active trading undertaking to start with. For such reason, we adopted - first to keep all our business premises gained either as return in kind and or profits of all pour JVC with lots of properties developer and secondly we bought those premises that having good prospect to [promote BICC.
(3) Despite our very tight budget but with the view of good future income stream, within the 2006-2011 we bought shophouses in various strategic locations for our BICC intent, which among them were 24 (?) units in Desa Ilmu, 6 units at Mukah Boulevard, 5 units at Stakan, 5 units at Jalan Sultan Tengah, 4 units at Rubber Road, a return of 13 units at I-com Square Padungan, we built 10 units at Merapok, and accordingly we intended to buy back 10 units at Sentosa. Indeed we wanted to buy at least 10 units of shophouse at Jalan Matang which we could foresee as a good opportunity for BICC among those natives within the nearby Low Cost Housing neighborhoods. Unfortunately the PHSB BoD turned them down. Personally I was a bit tight up with the management of our plantations and all those in hand, and the market was not really favourable as yet, our push to build and or buy BICC related premises was a bit very cautious.
(5) Indeed I tried to expand Taib's NCR policy-objective into this BICC as I did with the Ladang Rakyat, just then, around mid 2009, "something hard hit on me" so much so my mental and physical strength "eroding significantly". By right, I could easily made LCDA and the PHSB BoD to let LCDA to develop and manage the Masterplan for key districts and subdistrict "Central Places Cities" that would provide much balance mutli-sectoral participation of our diverse societies.
8. ESTABLISHING TRADEMARKS OR FOOTPINTS:
In my student days, I loved history, geography and arts apart from Math and Sciences. Accordingly political development or development economic were contemporary subjects that I began to appreciate more as I join the public service. With those interests, I used to read a lots on trademarks made by world wide big leaders. Locally, I sense Taib and Mahathir for that matter, they both love to put lots of socio-economic trademarks all over. Nonetheless, for Taib the impacts of his trademarks were not as intense as say the Petronas Tower of Mahathir's. All was due to the vast land mass that Sarawak has with relatively very small yet heterogenous population and the "isolated" nature Sarawak within the national and global markets.
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8.1 Telaga Air, Beladin and Awat-Awat:
I was not academically a socio-economist person, therefore my first assignment in the SPU was then to organise the Library. About three months as "the librarian" to the SPU, I have the opportunity to read the so called "rural development undertaking by the UNDP" world wide. Through reading, I then could figure out on how they organized some great development in the third world countries. Being assigned to the SPU in 1986, which by then the SPU was having huge responsibilities with the very least staffs, after having organizing the messed SPU library, I was assigned to do Socio-economic Survey for the so called Telaga Air Model Villages. Telaga Air was then not a village as yet. It was just a point where about seven neighboring villages - Teluk Simpur, Sg Aur, Trombol, Sibu Laut etc within the Sampadi area to get their fresh water supply at time of draught.
(2) These seven villages were also poverty stricken areas and normally will be cut off from all sort of services during the heavy monsoon period Nov-March. The intention then was to resettle these villages to this Telaga Air and a benchmark survey must be organized. Indeed, despite I was still new in the service, I did critized the development concept of Model Village that the State want to apply to this Telaga Air. I was then also inspired by Mahathir called for our rural development should move toward "urbanization and industrialization" model and strategies. At Kuala Lumpur level, they name this as Halacara Baru Pembangunan Luar Bandar with Pusat Pertumbuhan Desa as the key elements. I rewrite the Village Model concept to match with the Federal Program and called it Rural Growth Center RGC. My intent then was to also get some funding from the Federal and not merely depending on the State.
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(4) We also perceived Beladin would have great impact as well since "Beladin then was an Isolated Islet" and LCDA was having big plantation development there then. We believe, the plantation will create lots of socio-economic spillover so much so Beladin must be developed into a proper township complete with all the necessary support services. Today, the plantation had matured, Beladin is well connected to its neighbouring villages and the soon to be 
completed Btg Saribas and Btg Lupar bridges would turned Beladin as a great Central Place for that coastal region. Beladin-Pusa has the most concentration of more than 50 GRT fishing vessels. We believe this region can be a great fishing and related upstream and down stream industrial development area. LCDA did facilitated for the local PNK to own a piece of land to build their required fishermen facilities. Accordingly LCDA did helped to build a Slipway that could facilitate for fishing boats building and maintenance locally.
(5) Indeed my next visualization of Telaga Air was to transform the whole of Sampadi-Santubong into the Hua Long Bay (Vietnam) of Sarawak. We may not having all those lime stone rock outcrops, but the evergreen Sarawak Apple Trees - the mangrove would definitely be a very splendid eco-system for the establishment of the Junk Hotels. Pasir Panjang development that Taib wanted us to develop, my hidden intent was to move along such an eco-tourism development.
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Leaving the service yet one didn't leave something that would give great socio-economic benefit to the community, I would say, it is just like a cattle whom grazed and just be fatten. Even a fatten cattle serve its very purpose - to be handsomely slaughtered. Since I wanted to leave around 2009 and Taib requested me to stay on until the SE 2011, I then thought I must have something to trade off with him. Accordingly, I was having sort of "emotion instability" and thus I need really some serious mind blowing tasks to deceive my mind then. I have no intent to be personally known for certain projects or undertakings, my basic interests were and always what are there that I could fulfill what the Al Quran sayaing: An Nisa:36 "Worship Allah and associate nothing with Him, and to parents do good, and to relatives, orphans, the needy, the near neighbor, the neighbor farther away, the companion at your side, the traveler, and those whom your right hands possess. Indeed, Allah does not like those who are self-deluding and boastful".
(2) Kuching and even Sarawak as far as development is concern, is a small place. Any small change somewhere will definitely having impacts onto the nearby communities or some good news to talk about. Kampung Seberang - comprising Boyan, Gersik, Surabaya, Panglima Seman, Bintawa Hulu, Bintawa Tengah and Bintawa Hilir - housing about 12,000 population within 2,000-2,500 homes, of which I would say are 99.00 per cents are the Malays. Indeed these were among the very early Malays settlements even at times of the Brunei Sultanate and Brookes. The Bintawa mostly are made up of those migrants from all over the coastal population even as far as Matu-Daro. The Kampungs there are really in a messed. Crowded, not well organized, unhygienic, small winding roads and poor social services despite their location is just a spit distance from the State Government Administrative Center - Wisma Bapa Malaysia and the DUN building.
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(7) My personal biggest satisfaction about this Project was: "Taib, Mahathir, Muhhyddin and (Najib) were presence at the launching of the Project. Purposely we had arranged the launching be made at 2200-2330 hours Friday night on the 15 April, 2011 which was considered the apex of the SE 2011 campaign. The Project became the booster to win the Kuching City North with flying colors. Taib personally want the Project be implemented fast. He even wanted us to complete the implementation within six years period.
8.3 The Isthmus:
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(2) LCDA was instructed to build a tower immediately after the bridge from the Pending side. In order to form a twin welcoming towers, SEDC was also to follow suit. SESCO was allocated land next to the SEDC building. LCDA was give the privilege to design the towers and we choose bean-shape architecture to symbolize the growth prospect of the whole area. Personally I read, the the Isthmus was Taib's idea to spread the Kuching development toward the Kuching coastal area which would provide greater connection between Kuching South and the Senari Port. The Isthmus provides all the needed and short cut linkages between Bintawa, Pending, Demak, Darul Hana and Sejingkat straight to Bako. I believe Taib is working to make Kuching South as the Historical City, Kuching North as the Institutional City while the Isthmus would be Kuching Financial Center. Indeed this idea blended nicely with the prospect to turn Sampadi-Santubong-Bako as Tourism City. Definitely then would make Kuching a very interesting and a must visit Metro City in Borneo.
8.4 Binaria Takeover:
I would believe that Taib knew I'm a workaholic type of person. Indeed. Working is a pleasure for me. Being productively busy is a form of priceless excitement that I love most. I was also having a suspicion that Taib had wanted to keep me to stay as long as possible. Fortunate or unfortunate, LCDA was in the good track of recovery and moving far ahead. Our plantation investments were doing well. CPO price though not the best, but keep increasing progressively. LCDA coffer would be handsomely fill up soon. Some dividends started coming in.
(2) On December 15, 2010 he called me to have private audience with him. Somewhere in late 2009, he did instructed us to buy over all those parcel of properties at Jln Haji Taha, Kuching which then was known as the Binaria Business Area to facilitate for a better 
development ambient to the on going BaitulMal Complex next door. There were about 30 (?) parcels of land and properties there and all belong to Malays business communities. He asked for a quick brief. I told him that we had made Valuation over the Properties. We going to table to the BoD for approval soonest. I put forward three figures to him; first based on Government valuation, Iet called it X; then private Surveyor Valuation, giving a Figure of Y. Y was 40 per cents higher than X. We were suggesting to the BoD a Figure A of which was 25 per cents higher than Y and was 100 per cents higher than X. Our reasoning to go for Figure A were due to the following: first, the land was very prime, there won't be any equivalent very strategic piece in the future to such land; secondly, SE 2011 was coming shortly but it was only him who know when. There were already noises accusing me personally "as riding donkey" to takeon Malays strategic business area for not sure what then be the purposes. Political climate then was not really encouraging. Therefore, I suggested to him, let "money talk" and we need not to enter into war with these group. In my mind then was, we are not going to buy over the properties in 2011 but prolong to 2015 and by then my gut feeling, we have all the fund needed to handle them without the government assistance. We going to enter into buy over agreement soonest and pay progressively. These people can still do their business until we had paid all, then they must move out. We planned such timing for the Wisma BaitulMal development will only be completed by 2015, so much so the urgency to get the place vacated soonest is not really needed.
(4) Today I'm happy to see Abang Johari had turned that piece of land as a Hikmah Exchange Commercial Complex under the Permodalan Satok Bhd (?). The coming ART Kuching Downtown Station would give a better boast to the overall development and business prospect of the Kuching CBD.
8.5 Skuau RASCOM Settlement:
Nanga Skuau, Nanga Ngungun in Sibu, Nanga Tada and Nanga Jagau in Kanowit were the Federal Government "Kg Baru strategy" in the 1970s to combat communist terrorism infiltration into the rural natives. Scattered population along those Rajang river tributaries were group into those clustering settlements. The idea then was simple for the very simple minded population then. The Government would build them new longhouse with some education and health facilities. Each family then be given 5 acres (?) land for them to arm. In the 1970s, those seem to be luxuries - on security and poor socio-economic standard then. When I joined the SPU, visiting these places was among my very first assignment, and based on the very poor social situation even in the mid 1980s, "I dare to issue an authorization letter to FELCRA to come in to help".
(2) The LCDA Kanowit NCR development was supposed to expanded fast and to cover at least Ngungun, but this Boustead JV Project really was having never ending though time, so much so, Ngungun and all those were never being "bothered". Nonetheless, around 2010-2011 we managed to get two NCR Projects to cover all those areas. Why was these areas "being neglected que serra serra" for too long? In 1980 there was a leadership crisis in the State BN coalition party named SNAP. The crisis prolonged to 1983 when a splinter party PBDS was formed and despite both SNAP and PBDS were admitted into the BN coalition, both didn't meet eye-to-eye. There were rival to each other in the SE 1983. But then both SNAP and PBDS never ending with each other internal political squabble leading to greater split and emergence of various splitter political parties. All these while, they were fighting for support among the same population circle. These RASCOM areas were greatly involved and affected. People resented so hard to the government moves to help them out. Accordingly, unfortunately, their new settlement areas were very "isolated" in nature. So much so, "political infiltration and discrimination" then over taken the terrorist danger.
(3) Personally I was sort of acquitted with these RASCOM problems. I studied all the related files when I was in the SPU. Poverty was a very big issue in the area. Though I had managed to get FELCRA to help, but due to bad cocoa and rubber price then, they can't do much. In 2010, I met Taib to talk on the Skuau case. In view of the SE 2011 coming fast, their 40 years or more outstanding issues must be resolved fast. No body had been specially tasked to help out. Not even LCDA was part of the party. My personal empathy to these people, that gave me the courage to face Taib on this. There was sufficiently big piece of land supposed to be alienated to the original affected about 2,000 people or households. Each was allocated 5 acres (?) of plot. Since FELCRA involvement in the Project, they had accumulated good
(4) Looking back, I was really please to be able to come to the longing solution to these RASCOM "deserted" population. FELCRA I would believe continue to play their prime role there and I would say all of these places now are accessible by road and related alternatives economic activities.
9. MY SOME TRICKY GAME PLAY:
As I had said earlier, LCDA is a public entity except the staff compensation system need be corporate-based. In term of shareholder and stakeholder - LCDA belong to the Government and must serve the Government for the good of the public. So much so LCDA must strike a balance between political-social and commercial maneuvering and attainments. Theological analogy, I would say LCDA can't be a Satan nor an Angel but a rationale human being - a good great professional human being. My reading, criminal-legal movies liking, experiences and as well as exchange of ideas formal and non-formal with many parties gave me a very different Intelligent and Emotional Quotient EQS - probably could be classified as joker yet cunning. I normally approach whatever task and or situation from soft to though. Firstly in any conduct, with no exemption, I would always be very soft and be giving. Once I'm in, then my toughness will intensify over time and situation. In a sense I'm not a diplomatic and worst not a romantic type of a person. I'm objective and result oriented creature. Well my military training taught me - One Shot One Soul Gone.
(2) I would say the way I moved LCDA was attributed to the way I treat works and funs. I treated works as funs. Work is fun to me. Therefore, I enjoyed working and really hated fun that won't contribute to progress. I won't go for fun just for fun. Since Sept., 1998 till December 2011, I hardly took leave. My accumulated leave entitlement amount to 14 working months, and I just forego those leave. I prefer to work rather to take leave. Even when my application for premature retirement was approved in Sept., 2011, I should just went off on leave and bye bye, yet I served LCDA till sharp 1700 hrs on Friday 30 Dec., 2011. Following were among my personal traits that I deployed in managing LCDA in 2002-2011:
9.2 Two things that the LCDA staffs probably will remember me for my crazy approach in developing creative and resilient personnel. Corporate organization is about luring and managing investments. Even the so called socio-economic undertaking that we need to execute, we must placed in mind the commercial potentials that we must explored. All our investments must provide good ROI to everybody - government, people, JV partners and LCDA ourselves. For these, training and further study definitely would help but there are so many things that one can't get from the classes. Accordingly, time was an essence, so much so we can't be sending our personnel for training and or further study too often. We must deliver yet at the same time we need to build up our professionalism fast.
.jfif)
9.22 Secondly, personnel state of heath was very important. We sort of made everybody to achieve perfect BMI. We organized monthly get together to sweat off. We did all sort of exercise together with the personnel family members. As a peak to the program, we then made all the personnel to pay RM50.00 per person to get to the Lowii Peak of Mt. Kinabalu. .jfif)
No body was exempted except on a very solid ground. Indeed almost all the personnel did conquered ASEAN highest point. The very reason why we did so was to instill high fighting spirit among our people. To get to the Lowii Peak is not easy. Not only one's must have endurance but most important strong personal and team spirit. To get to the Lowii Peak at 0200 hours in the very cold dawn and climbing the cliff from Sayat-Sayat to the Peak if it is done in the bright light, I doubt many would had made it. Accordingly, around 0515 hours to catch a sliver glimpse of the first sunlight, to me really a SubahanaAllah very amazing matter. To me, the LCDA staffs have huge responsibilities ahead, so much so they must prove to themselves they could stand to the challenges. They must achieved to the peak of their serving spirit. I threatened all my personnel whom can't make it to the Lowii Peak, they will be fired but at the peak, signifying, if they failed, they must only failed after hard trying or surrender upon success.
.jfif)
9.6 Despite my disliking to import senior executives to fill up certain key post in LCDA, there were instances I have to do it. All was for the good of LCDA inter agencies relationship in the future. There were some colleges in the Civil Service System whom have high ambition but complaining not being given good chances. I normally invited these people to join us on secondment basis. Here in LCDA, my intent was to expose them to much challenging tasks as well as very different working culture. We hope then, we could changed them to be much creative in their working approaches; much productive, cost-effective and clear objectives focus. We want to equip them with better working traits. We took them for 2-4 years period and thereon, normally I would went over to the Deputy State Secretary and or State Secretary and briefed them on these fellows performance and attitude. Alhamdullilah then, they got promoted upon their return.
10. MY VERY HRM&D TRADE MARK AND INTENT:
I did lot of thing by instinct. Well observing, researching and thinking are my must steps in arriving at my decision, yet many times at the last minutes I may change based on my gut feeling. Why? Definitely, most of the time I really can't figure out why I took certain stands and attitudes. One probably will get to the why, if later one read my next writing titled "Being the King".
(3) Theologically, my attitude is nothing difficult to comprehend. For Muslims, everyone of us must understand the underlying harsh, suffering and lives threatening of our great prophets have to undergo despite by right they should never for being the Al Mighty most trusted mankind - Abraham was thrown into bonfire; Ismael our today Muslims ancestor, he was left to cry to great thirst and his mom misery; Noah was subjected to flood and lost most of his people and dear one, and even why was Muhammad SAW despite being mentioned even in the Tuarah and Injil of his prophethood 2,000 - 3,000 years of his birth yet he was subjected to poverty, orphanage, isolation, and warfares. I'm not associating myself with those great figures, but in lots of case, there will be always someone to sacrifice for other to celebrate.
11. MAKING AN EXIT:
(3) Then I travelled to Papua New Guinea, and met Sir Micheal Somare the Prime Minister for a second time. We discussed on many things. Through his son, he requested me to help him plan for the Sepik Province Regional Development Plan, which I has no hesitation to do it for free. My idea then was to follow up with Sarawak-based investor to start a Sago Mill in Wewak where about 5.0 million hectares sago are growing naturally. My thought then was, if all progressing well, then probably being far away, my soul would be rejuvenating. Minister for Economic and Petroleum Development, Arthur Somare was Sir Micheal Somare second son. I met him for lunch and we talked on many socio-economic issues. That was how then, Somare's eldest son, Sana Somare mooted the idea for Arthur to arrange for me to establish and head their Economic Planning Unit (EPU). I can see such opportunity as "a break away" for me but I can't commit myself, and I requested Sir Micheal to communicate with Taib on the matter. He then made an official visit to Sarawak to visit our Petrochemical Industry in Bintulu in 2009. He did spoke to Taib, but due to the coming SE in 2011, Taib can't release me. I did indicated to Taib even in 2009 that I want to go off, he requested me to hold on for a while. After the April SE 2011 again I expressed my interest to go off and around July 2011, I submitted my premature retirement application which was approved in Sept., 2011.
(5) Alhamdullilah from 2006-2011 Taib almost agreed to anything new that LCDA want to do. We were denied only on three proposals - first turning Sarawak River Bank from Pangkalan Panjang to Brooke Dockyard into raised water park with ample multi-storey car parks, transforming the present Electra House into Mall, Hotel and Eateries Piaza (which In Shaa Allah is in my pipe line new undertaking now) and revival of the abundant Merdeka Plaza then.
12. MANY THANKS:
Few days after I resumed my task in LCDA, I met a good long buddy. He was once had served LCDA for quite sometimes. While I was in the SPU, we used to cross each others in our duties within the sector that I used to overseeing. What shocking me was, his comment on my fast moving up "You were being removed from your SPU, because you seem to be a threat to certain personalities". Indeed, few months later I paid a visit to my dad's old friend whom I was used to and he was just kampung ordinary folk, he also made a very interesting remark: "You is out of your SPU because someone don't like you be there. You are too close to the people." Those "cautions" as I would called them, if one look from and old Malays' tradition, are something of not "good path ahead". I should then should take a "step back" or "be very reserved in everything".
(2) Again I would say, Allah guided me well, He strengthened my no fear no favor character upholding, I never bother about those "cautions", my focus then was to serve the State to the best. I pushed doing what I need to do - I don't only did things that I only know to do, I went beyond. Those "caution" was always there in my mind to this day. I know, when one is up high somewhere, everybody will see him with all sorts of interests. By the way, I thanks those two, one had rest in peace In Shaa Allah and the other still around. I"ve been loging to meet up with him and query on reason or how he came up with such a "caution". Nonetheless, without realizing, keeping myself focus to my deeds, indeed such was the very "how" my idolize Umar Al Khataab acted to the stage that even the "satan will avoided him on his path". The "caution" made me to then and even now to choose to be on very low profile living and character. I avoided to be seen to be too close with any great guy. Even I choose not to hang around with many friends. I preferred to stand mostly as myself. I enjoyed to be unseen and having very simple living.
.jfif)
(4) Today as I look back, for the sack of the State, I bet my family future wellbeing totally in the hands of Allah, sadly indeed I left my two beautiful growing kids (age 5 and 7 years old then) totally in their mother's hands - believing - let me sacrificed their happiness by me dedicating fully my service to the State and I prayed for Allah to care for their future to the best. I recalled, my mom and dad took great care of their society so much so Allah then takes care of me and siblings to our best. Caring for the people was my focus priority. Alhamdullilah so far, such was my stand in any public responsibilities that I being vested to care for. I care most to execute my social responsibilities at the expense of my personal (and family) needs and wants.
(6) By the way, despite certain quarters were happy for me to leave, I have no regret as far as my relationship with Taib is concern. My greatest pleasure working under Taib was he gave me lots of freedom. He was clear of what were policy matters and what were management matters. He kept to his policy environs and those management issues were of the management responsibilities. I really enjoy the freedom that he gave to LCDA and me to meet and initiated all sort of related investments into the State.
(7) Definitely, his trust didn't come cheap and easy, as I believe he regularly put tests on me. Some of those tests, almost brought me to succumb to my face flat to the floor. At least four times Taib made me sweat in my pant - first wrt partnership takeover, second in two properties development, and the fourth wrt logging permit allocation. As I have said, I was blessed for in all cases, I never decided on personal basis. All LCDA deals must firstly comply to our standard procedures, then decisions were made based on layers of analysis and discussions, and prior to my signature to any deal, all had been cleared with all the relevant parties. I knew there were certain quarters who talked to Taib and even coerced me to relax on our procedures, I never back off. In one deal "I was pressed hard to be linient and give in to somebody demand" I never barge off. I even said it clearly that I preferred to resign rather to bow to potential of malpractices. I placed no personal interest in any of my official dealing while serving the Government. I believe Taib recognized me for such character, so much so, as I said I then enjoyed lots of trust from him.
.jfif)
(10) In Shaa Allah, I would get into my normal health state in 2-3 months times, whatever advantages that Allah had given me over the 25 years serving the public and semi-corporate service, now that I'm in the real corporate and social entrepreneur arena, I would be able to help certain key entities to see and manage the future on a much independence and cost-effectively.
EPILOQ:
To pick on Muhammad SAW is a too big name for any presence man to emulate. But Muhammad SAW had one "small" companion by the name of Bilal Bin Rabah. He originally was a slave. Being a slave in those evil Quraish Jahilliah time was not even to a stray dog .jfif)
value. When Muhammad SAW preached Islam, Bilal quietly renounced idolatry, becoming one of the earliest reverts to the faith. But then he was discovered by his lord. He then was tortured to almost with anything that could made him to denounce Islam. He didn't. He love Allah more to his own safety and life. Incensed at Bilal's refusal, Umayyah, his Lord ordered that Bilal be whipped and beaten while spread-eagled upon the Arabian sands under the desert sun, his limbs bound to stakes. When Bilal still refused to recant, Umayyah ordered that a hot boulder be placed on Bilal's chest. However, Bilal remained firm in belief and continued to say "ahad, ahad". He then was save by Abu Bakar As Siddique and presented as the Boy to Muhammad SAW and became one of his close companion. Bilal then turned Muazin, the Prayer Caller at times of the SAW. Today, all over the world, the Muazin position is interchangeably named as Bilal in memory of such "small" yet great man.
(2) Bilal was among the first to revert to Islam. Bilal rose to prominence in the Islamic community of Medina, as Muhammad appointed him minister of the Bayt al-Mal. In this capacity, Bilal distributed funds to widows, orphans, wayfarers, and others who could not support themselves.
(3) After Muhammad died in 632 CE, Bilal was one of the people who did not give bay'ah to Abu Bakar. It is documented that when Bilal did not give bay'ah to Abu Bakr, Umar ibn al-Khataab grabbed Bilal by his clothes and asked, "Is this the reward of Abu Bakr; he emancipated you and you are now refusing to pay allegiance to him? Bilal replied, "If Abu Bakr had emancipated me for the pleasure of Allah, then let him leave me alone for Allah; and if he had emancipated me for his service, then I am ready to render him the services required. But I am not going to pay allegiance to a person whom the Messenger of God had not appointed as his caliph." This was said when Bilal wanted to go for Jihad. Abu Bakr then let him go. He then migrated to Syria. The following is a poem by Bilal on his refusal to give Abu Bakr bay'ah (to be his blue eye boy):
- By Allah! I did not turn towards Abu Bakr,
- If Allah had not protected me,
- hyena would have stood on my limbs.
- Allah has bestowed on me good
- and honoured me,
- Surely there is vast good with Allah.
- You will not find me following an innovator,
- Because I am not an innovator, as they are
Kg Terasi, Sadong Jaya
4 July 2024 - 18 Feb., 2025
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