Day Seven, 10th of May, 2006, Sabah Poverty Research

They produce 2 tin cans of latex per day and make 20 Kg of this sheet rubber per day.
Kalawat Community Forest - They are the invisible on the official document.




In the early morning we left Kota Kinabalu to the Pitas. On the way to Pitas, we dropped by the place called Kalawat, Class I Forest Reservation area. It is about an hour distance from KK by car. There are about 21 households and they are still living in the FR. Since it is illegal to reside in the FR, they don:t exist as a town even though they are living a very much normal life as other normal towns. The officer in charge of that FR showed us the detail of the households living there and I took a photo of it. Although there were people living there long time ago, the town was built in a more intensive way from 1979. After the drought, and the Great Fire in 1982 and 1983, more people came here to live in. It was classified as Class 1 FR in 1992(there are seven categories of the FR and I need to study more about these categories). They encroahed the jungle and grow hill rice, cash crops and of course rubber. We followed the collecting process of the rubber and I filmed it. It was very interesting since it was my first time to see the collection of the latex. The labour intensity does not seem to be very hard. But they have to get up early in the morning to make a chip on the trees to collect the latex during the day. The old lady I filmed carried the paint can and I was told that she colleced about two cans. They can make 20kgs of natural rubber out of 40 kgs of latex per day. 40 kgs of latex is roughlu two cans of those paint can. When they leave it as it is in the can, it is called scrap rubber and it is much cheapee than sheet rubber which they made it. I took a photo of the sheet rubber and touched it. I don;t know but it smells rotten chiken. We had to borrow the bottle of water of George to wash our hands in the car. According to the officer the government started Community Forestry Project, which they think is win-win project and encouraged the people to plant trees rather than cash crops in order to prevent the encroachment. Population is getting decreased.

PITAS



We left for Pitas around 11:30 and arrived in Pitas around 3:00 PM. When we entered the PITAS area I could feel its situations. Once prosperous town with the logging industry, Pitas was declining when the logging industry was discouraged by the government. I was told that the declining began about 5 years ago. Although road condition was not that bad I could not see many lorries between Kota Belud and Pitas. The District Officer, Mr Abdul Wah happened to be the cousion in law of Dr Iguchi. What a co-incidence. We told that he knew he was working in the north but did not know he was working as DO in Pitas which we had paid so much attention. He seemed to be very excited by various government projects in Pitas. Recently the government announced the Kenaff Industry project in Pitas and planned a large scale rubber plantation in Bengkoka, Pitas. He boasted the new invention of floating fish cage(Floating Bagang). Given the case in Lahar Datu where the seaweed farm was attacked by the turtles, it was an interesting invention. We were told that now it was possible to go to Sandarkan by car. Although about 18 kms were not completed paved, it is possible to reach Sandarkan within 4-5 hours.
The Bengkoka area, the project site of the rubber industry for the poor, is about 40 minutes away from the office by car. The technician called Innocent (very unusal name, he told us that he is not guity) guided us. The story from him has a lot of important things realted to land ownership, previous projects A and B and the plan to relocate poor family households in the middle of the rubber plantation. Especially their plan to build a long wooden house divided by the thin wall called Kongsi was very depressing. What will happen to their social life?
We looked arond the site where the PM will make a visit on the 9th of June and came to Kota Marud. Of course, the hotel we stayed in is the best in town, the Marud Inn, which is equipped with the air conditioner making sounds of Formula One race!
Tomorrow we will look around the successul community forestry project, Gana, in Rinkabau Forest Reserve.