Merotai rep asks CM not to remain silent on NCA issue

KOTA KINABALU: Merotai assemblyman Sarifuddin Hatta is urging Chief Minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Haji Noor not to remain silent on the Nature Conservation Agreement (NCA) issue.

He urges Hajiji to come out once and for all to inform whether the NCA has been axed or allowed to go ahead.

“There has been no clear statement so far and I’m wondering if the state cabinet is complicit in the deal,” he said.

Sarifuddin is also calling for the cancellation of the agreement.

“Cancelling the agreement is the noble and right thing to do for Sabahans. Not just today but for many generations to come,” he said in a statement on Friday.

Darau assemblyman Azhar Matussin also urged the State Government to address the recent international news report on NCA.

According to him, the report mentioned that the NCA had been approved in the Sabah State Legislative Assembly (DUN) sitting, a claim which he said was untrue and misleading for the international community.

Azhar, who is also the Warisan supreme council member, said the party had never objected to any efforts to preserve Sabah’s natural treasures, which involves carbon trading.

Although he concurred that carbon trading is internationally accepted, he stressed that the matter should be dealt with openly - taking into account the rights of the indigenous and native people of Sabah.

Azhar was commenting on Warisan president Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal’s recent statement on the Al Jazeera news report called ‘Very hush-hush: Borneo’s $80bn carbon deal stokes controversy.’

“I can confirm that no such motion was tabled by the government during the recent DUN sitting (as what was mentioned in the Al Jazeera report).

“I was there entire session,” Azhar said in a statement here on Friday.

He revealed that Shafie, who is the opposition leader, was the first assemblyperson to raise the objection on the NCA in the Sabah DUN, on December 6.

“We are questioning the State Government’s decision to sign the agreement, which looks one-sided and does not seem to bring any clear benefit to Sabahans.

“The duration of the agreement is for 100 years, causing two million hectares of our forest in Sabah to be handed over to a foreign company based in Singapore,” he said, adding that the company has no experience in the carbon trading industry.