BN Continues to Leave Dayaks Behind

Dayaks still backward with no relief in sight

More than 40 years after the NEP, Vision 2020, New Economic Model, ETP and Score the indigenous people of Sarawak still rank the lowest in terms of educational attainment, occupational hierarchy and more than 50 percent of them have either primary or no formal education.

These findings are confirmed by the 1991, 2000 Population & Housing Census and projected figures from the 2009 Labour Force Survey. The percentage share of the Dayaks in the Agriculture sector is growing in Sarawak instead of declining.

This contradicts the Vision 2020's objective that an economic sector should not be dominated by one ethnic group. This shows that there is no upward mobility for the Dayaks. The majority of the Dayaks cannot move up to the more value-added tertiary sector.

Those Dayaks in the tertiary sectors are working as elementary workers. More than 70 percent of these Dayak workers are still expected to be around after 2020 or 2030. How can they be benefited from the jobs generated by Score.

How can Score train extra 1.5 million skilled workers by 2030 when currently less than 1 percent of the enrolment in the secondary schools are in Secondary Technical and Vocational Schools?

All these show that the Dayaks are moving in the direction of economic exclusion and marginalisation. I appeal to the Dayak scholars and academicians to compile the human capital base of Sarawak by ethnicity and to simulate the scenarios by 2030 or 2050 based on the current affirmative action plans formulated by the federal or state government to integrate the Dayaks into the economic system of Malaysia.

The two ethnic groups in Sarawak which are most neglected are the Iban and "other bumiputera". They are so far behind that it takes more than a generation for them to attain educational parity with other ethnic groups.

Source: http://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/161854

Breaking Away

We’re all born the same, unfettered by preconceived limitations. Eventually, we submit to laws. There are those we must embrace in order to be free . . . the laws of hard work and discipline. Then there are those we must challenge for that very same freedom . . . the laws of conformity and small-mindedness. The weight of these Barisan Nasional chains can be so subtle, we forget them. This is how we are shackled, tamed. Normalcy becomes the rule and we grow comfortable with limits. Like a dog at the end of a Barisan Nasional leash, we move but never of our own will.

It is time to defy, time to rise, time to change is NOW . . .

We will test our mettle, pull hard against these restraints and together we can achieve more than what we can possibly do on our own. We will not let conventional thinking rule us. As we live here in Sarawak, the Barisan Nasional chain will bury deep into our flesh, the weight will pull us and our future generations down. But we must fight. We will defy Barisan Nasional. If we fall now, we will get right back up.

My friends, life is short and every minute that passes hurtles us closer to the end. In the time that we have, we must commit ourselves to this cause that’s far greater than ourselves and the cause bind into us – these words are the contract that bind us to our promise for the future generations . . . Upon this contract, I have signed by name in blood, sweat and tears – to unbind our future generations from the chains of Barisan Nasional.

What Works for Reforming Sarawak's Failing Education System

Education reform is a top agenda of the new Sarawak state government. We have seen that despite massive spending by the Federal government and ambitious attempts at reforms, the performance of our education system has barely improved in decades. In fact, compared to school systems in the region, ours has seen a decline.

The Malaysian Smart Schools System - developed by a consortium led by Telekom Malaysia, and a flagship application of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) initiated by the then Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir in 1997, has failed to bear fruit despite the billions of ringgits being spent. The Federal government’s 2009 National Key Results Area (NKRA) for education has not produced any report card to convince us that the NKRA initiatives are delivering results.

Children in Sarawak cannot be allowed to fall victim to Malaysia’s failing education system. It is a priority of the new Sarawak government to immediately and quickly establish a new education system that works to raise Sarawak children to a level as those in Korea, Finland and Singapore – countries that have that world’s best performing education systems.

The Sarawak Community Action Network (SCAN) has undertaken a year-long study to understand how to develop a high performing education system for Sarawak. The result of the study is to be used by the new Sarawak state government to establish an education system that truly works for children of Sarawak. The new government cannot afford to have a single child fail and that is what today’s adult Sarawakians owe to the coming generations of Sarawakians.

The study involved an analysis of selected education systems from different countries that have improved significantly, analysis of education systems that have been maintaining top positions, interviews with some thought leaders in those education systems and an analysis of the annual OECD PISA results from 2003 to 2009. During the course of the study, elements that are specific to the individual system and those that are of universal relevance were explored in order to help Sarawak’s new educational leaders replicate the success of high performing education systems. This study is sponsored, in part, by Sarawak’s own entrepreneur, innovator and change agent, Mr Granda Aing.

This paper presents a summary of the findings of SCAN’s study.
The study began with these key questions: Why do some education systems always perform better and improve at a faster rate than others? Why do some schools consistently succeed where others do not? What do successful school systems have in common? What methods and tools do they employ to improve learning outcomes of students?

The SCAN study found three most important universal elements that work:
1. Selective hiring of the right people to be teachers,
2. Develop them into highly effective instructors, and
3. Ensure that the system is capable of delivering only the best instruction for each student.

The successful systems demonstrate that significant improvement in desired results can be achieved in a short time – 3 to 6 years. The systems also show that by applying these practices, significant improvements is achievable in failing school systems and that the practices are applicable to any system, irrespective of culture and geography.

The following commonly used approaches to improve education systems in many countries, including the US and the UK, have been shown to be least effective, in that they do not contribute significantly to student outcomes as measured by scores in mathematics, science and reading:

1. Increase in public spending per student,
2. Improvements in student-to-teacher ratio,
3. Decrease in class size,
4. Decrease in school size,
5. Structural reforms in the governance of schools, such as autonomy of schools governed by elected boards and decentralization of powers to local school districts,
6. Reforms in curriculum standards,
7. Changes in assessments and testings,
8. Funding of schools,
9. Inspection of quality, and
10. Reforming relationship of schools to communities.

The SCAN study shows unquestionable evidence: student learning cannot be improved without improving quality of instruction. It is also noted that almost every education system have undertaken the process of reducing class size. For example, most countries in OECD over the past 7 years have increased the teacher-student ratio. However, evidence shows that this effort does not significantly result in better student outcomes, except at the very early grades. More teachers translate to less money per teacher and systems cannot be selective about who could be teachers.
Evidence from the SCAN study suggests that the new Sarawak educational leaders must focus on quality of teachers as this is the main driver of the variation in student learning. The quality of any education system cannot be higher than the quality of its teachers.

For example, a seminal research in one education system shows that if 2 average 8-year-old children were taught by different teachers – one a high performing teacher and the other a low performer, the learning outcomes of the students diverge by more than 50 percentile points within 3 years. Reducing class size from 30 to 15 students improves an average student’s performance by, at most, 8 percentile points. In a study of another system, evidence shows that students in earlier years of schooling, when placed with low-performing teachers for several years consecutively, suffer from irreversible educational loss. In some systems, students who score in the top 20% on literacy and numeracy at age 7, are twice as likely to obtain a university degree as children in the bottom 20%.

Sarawak’s new educational leaders now have evidence suggesting that even in good education systems, children who do not make good progress in their early school years because they are not taught by teachers of sufficient skills and competencies, have very small chance of recovering the lost years. All top performing education systems depend ultimately on the quality of its teachers.

All top performing systems from Dallas to Seoul and from Singapore to Helsinki, dispel the common belief that it is impossible to make teaching a preferred profession for good number of high-performers and that attracting better people requires the government to pay higher salaries. These systems have shown that making teaching the career of choice does not depend on high pay, but more on small, simple policy choices such as: designing and establishing robust hiring and training processes, giving attractive starting pay, and managing the status of the profession more carefully. For Sarawak’s new educational leaders, it means legislating an entirely new policy on education so that a new education system can be implemented rapidly.

By continuing the education system of the Federal government in Sarawak, we will only fail Sarawak’s future generation.

http://tinyurl.com/edsys2012

Our Real Assets

If you haven’t read, the book entitled “What Color Is Your Parachute?” is recommended reading, even if you are having a steady job and progressing in your career. A best-seller, it’s about more meaningful work, changing career and job-hunting. More so, it’s about exploring and discovering what you want out of life and who you are as a person. The book takes a relook in a different perspective at the question, “What type of work am I willing to do?”

What’s the significance of a book that talks about meaningful work?

Often, within the short time spent in a lift with office workers getting to their offices, the common conversation is about share price and stock market. All news channels in print or electronic, have something about share market performance. There’s no shortage of stock market news on the Internet. Company board meetings certainly touch on boosting share price.

Is the stock we own our most valuable asset?

An employee share option scheme left a number of a company’s employees in debt and their savings nowhere to be seen following the drop in share price that came in tandem with the recent financial crisis. The hope and expectation of making some money from exercising the ESOS turned tragic.

A Nobel Prize-winning economist, Gary Becker, said that in modern economy, up to 80% of a person’s economic output comes from human capital, against land, machinery and others. Many people are mesmerized by how rich they can be with the portfolios of stocks and properties they own, but do not see the crucial asset they have in their earning power. Our education and training are worth a lot. We can get value not just from shares, but from ourselves and the mechanism of getting the value is a job. Our salary is the dividend on our human wealth.

Those of us who’ve been affected by economic recessions and financial crisis or those of us who’ve lost our jobs may already relearn how to create wealth as we relook at our jobs differently. Especially so if that thing we do in the office every day is our sole financial lifeline. Those who have not been affected would not know the true value of what we have until it’s gone.

These days, a predictable salary seems more appealing than big bonuses and ESOS. Government jobs, one of the last bastions of security, is definitely getting even more appealing. A better option now is to use whatever money we have to take a class, instead of spending on shares, unit trusts or properties. Perhaps, soon we’ll find ourselves perusing a list of the best-paying, fastest-growing professions as we visualize ourselves as a network engineer or wellness therapist.

Billions Misappropriated and George Chan Must Resign

For the billions of taxpayer money siphoned off, Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr George Chan can only have himself to blame, take full responsibility and resign immediately. Who else is responsible for the misappropriation of more than 60 percent of Government allocations for vital infrastructure projects between 2002 and 2008? Any person with a gram of intelligence knows that answer.

As reported in The Star, the Deputy Minister now wants to find out who was responsible and take appropriate action against them. Dr Chan, who is also State Industrial Development Minister and State Minister for Agriculture Modernisation must own up instead of ordering another internal investigation into the findings by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC). An investigation will be another waste of taxpayer money and undermine the work and independence of the MACC.

MACC Deputy Commissioner Datuk Zakaria Jaffar had earlier issued a statement that the MACC had uncovered cases in Sarawak where up to 60 percent of Government allocations had been ''diverted'' away from the projects for which the funds were meant. Zakaria claimed that such misappropriation of funds had happened between 2002 and last year and that MACC investigations had shown that only 40 percent of the money given by the Government for the projects was spent on the projects proper while the other 60 percent were leaked to elsewhere.

No wonder Sarawak’s rural population continue to live below the poverty line.

One question we need to ask now is, why is that MACC have not prosecuted any party?

Diverted Elsewhere - 60% of Development Funds

The revelation by the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) that 60 percent of Government allocations for key infrastructure projects have been diverted elsewhere is most shocking.

MACC's investigation revealed that between 2002 and 2008, only 40 percent of the money given by the Government were spent on the projects proper.

Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr George Chan responded by wanting MACC to give full and detailed briefing on their findings.

If we learned from what happened to the Auditor General's report on abuses on the state administration, MACC will have to retract their report or revise to a milder version.

For as long as we continue to keep Taib Mahmud, PBB and Barisan Nasional in power, we Sarawakians will continue to lose out while the powerful few will continue to amass wealth.

New accurate measure of the global markets

For years, economists, along with everyone else, thought of palm oil as exactly what it looked like: a pinkish, sludgy irrelevance. People knew that it was used to make food and soap but everything else about it, including its origins, seemed slightly distasteful.

In 2009 palm oil has not changed its colour or texture, but as an economic indicator it is unrecognisable. In a world of food and energy crises, of credit implosions, green politics and the rise of Asia, it has become the gauge that straddles them all — the ultimate global speedometer.

Through its price fluctuations and ever-changing trade destinations, palm oil has become an accurate measurement of hundreds of global markets.

Its versatility is the key, which is the main reason why the world consumes 42 million tonnes a year — twice as much as it did a decade ago. For all of the criticism that palm oil plantations attract for destroying the rainforest and endangering wildlife, the demand is a reading of a global population trying to feed and power itself under challenging circumstances.

The growth of palm oil has tracked the rising wealth of the middle classes in China and India, which buy up a quarter of all global supplies every year. Those who can afford to fry more of their food, and when other edible oil stocks can not keep up, or when prices rise too far, palm oil becomes the alternative.

As a biofuel feedstock, palm oil can meet a similar demand with energy, offering an alternative strategy when the markets are knocked out of kilter.

Palm prices tell us how rich the average Chinese family feels at new year, and with what sort of food the Muslim world will be breaking the fast each night of Ramadan. It tells us where London brokers think crude oil prices are heading and what Chicago futures traders think of this year’s soya bean crop and how badly El Niño is hurting South-East Asia this cycle.

In Malaysia and Indonesia, which between them meet about 87 per cent of the global demand, palm oil price movements dictate government policy, shape economic prospects and draw billions of dollars of direct investment.

For Malaysia, palm oil competes with tourism and manufacturing as the three biggest sources of economic growth. A couple of years ago, a bumper haul and dazzling prices allowed the Government in Kuala Lumpur to give a bonus to every civil servant in the country.

In Indonesia palm oil plays an even more central role in the country’s economic future. One popular view is that Indonesia belongs in three of the world’s most promising and exciting, emerging markets. The theory is backed by the idea that an industry that already employs two million people has the scope to double its output by 2014.

Perhaps most critically of all, palm oil is the canary in the mine for biofuel policy-making around the world. Setting stomachs and cars against each other in direct competition for calories is a finely balanced game, more likely to go wrong than right.

A poorly calculated subsidy in one country can cause dangerous price rises in a food commodity on another continent. In almost all cases, the price of palm oil is where the folly emerged.

Source: The Times Online, by Leo Lewis

Gross National Happiness - New Measure of Development

The new Sarawak state government, as a mainstream policy-making body, can be more sensitive to alternative approaches and start to measure Gross National Happiness and translate the indicators and data into public policy. If Sarawak’s new policymakers measure what really matters to people—health care, safety, a clean environment, and other indicators of well-being; economic policy would naturally shift towards sustainability and real progress for all Sarawakians. Here's why:

1. Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert says our beliefs about what will make us happy are often wrong -- a premise he supports with intriguing research, and explains in his accessible and unexpectedly funny book, Stumbling on Happiness. Dan Gilbert believes that, in our ardent, lifelong pursuit of happiness, most of us have the wrong map. In the same way that optical illusions fool our eyes -- and fool everyone’s eyes in the same way -- Gilbert argues that our brains systematically misjudge what will make us happy. And these quirks in our cognition make humans very poor predictors of our own bliss.

2. Jack Welch, who is regarded as the father of the “shareholder value” movement that has dominated the corporate world for more than 20 years, has said it was “a dumb idea” for executives to focus so heavily on quarterly profits and share price gains. Jack Welch, whose record at GE encouraged other executives to replicate its consistent returns, said that managers and investors should not set share price increases as their overarching goal. His comments, made in an interview for the FT’s series on the future of capitalism, come as the economic crisis has caused a radical rethinking by many leading executives and policymakers.

3. “Gross National Product counts air pollution, and cigarette advertising and . . . the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play . . . the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life wothwhile.” Robert Kennedy, 1968.

The above three topics may seem totally unrelated. However, upon putting my radical rethinking hat while considering Prime Minister Najib’s key result areas and gov’t KPIs in relation to measures of progress of Sarawak people, these three subjects are indeed, totally related. Governments, businesses and citizens must focus on what really make us happy.

Sarawakians must now set out a radical proposal to the new state government to guide the direction of modern Sarawak and the lives of people who live in them. In contrast to the conventional narrow focus on economic indicators, we must call on the new state government to directly and regularly measure people’s subjective well-being: their experiences, feelings and perceptions of how their lives are going, as a new way of assessing societal progress.

Some 40 years ago, in my kampong, my parents and siblings lived better, healthier and happier lives, despite no electricity, no roads and none of today’s modern necessities. We cooked over wood fire, got our water from the cool mountain stream and plenty of harvests from the farms.

Today, the rivers and streams have fewer fishes, we use too much pesticides in the farms, we live too much on credit with our education, house and car loans and we have to work harder to pay many bills and to cope with higher and higher costs of living. In all, I’m more miserable than I was 40 years ago.

The roads and electricity supply in the modern kampong today are not making our planet any better. In fact, these modern amenities only serve to increase our carbon footprint. We’ll be leaving to the future generations, a planet that’s degenerated and too costly to clean up.

The world is facing a breakdown of communities, environmental degradation, global warming, continuing poverty, and climbing rates of hunger. It is the perfect opportunity to reconsider development, progress, and purpose in terms of what is truly most important in life. Development is under scrutiny as a cycle of more production for more consumption to boost gross national product. There is an urgency to reconsider development in a broader, holistic manner and reclaim the concept of progress as genuine desirable change.

Economists, policymakers, reporters, and the public rely on the GDP as a shorthand indicator of progress; but the GDP is merely a sum of national spending with no distinctions between transactions that add to well-being and those that diminish it.
Mike Pennock from Genuine Progress Indicators (GPI) Atlantic argued that measures such as Gross National Happiness provide a guideline for developing a framework of national accounting where suitable monetary value can be placed on assets such as the environment and voluntary work. Thus costs and benefits can be calculated and accounted for in a balance sheet, and policymakers in turn cannot overlook vital aspects of human, social, and natural capital.

Some pioneering visions of alternative progress have emerged in Asia, chief among them the concept of Gross National Happiness as coined by Former King of Bhutan Jigme Wangchuck. Gross National Happiness has four pillars: the promotion of equitable and sustainable socioeconomic development; preservation and promotion of cultural values; conservation of the natural environment; and establishment of good governance. Gross National Happiness values are measured by tracking wellness in seven domains: economic, environmental, physical, mental, workplace, social, and political.

Currently there are two parallel global movements. The first can be characterized by the World Economic Forum, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund, supporting traditional notions of development. The second is the World Social Forum, Gross National Happiness, and allied movements that seek to redefine progress.

Measuring well-being would shift the goalposts for what nations regard as success. The aim is to bring about change in how societies shape the lives of their citizens. If they are to be effective, measures of well-being therefore need to influence the design of policy made by international, national and local governments.

Fact - BN gov't took grabbed and snatched NCR land

It was reported as front page news in the Borneo Post on the 19th June 2009 that the BN Government will not take away the native customary lands of the natives. The PM was quoted to urge the people to “…have confident in Barisan Nasional (BN) government. We have no intention of grabbing anybody’s land. The Ibans should not worry. The BN government will not snatch your property.”

In reply I wish to say that this assurance if true, come too little too late.

The fact and the truth is that the people’s land, in particular, the natives’ customary lands had already been taken, grabbed and snatched under the BN government.

The fact that the PM made this statement today shows that the people in particular the natives are complaining that their NCR lands had been taken away summarily all these years.

The fact that my legal firm is handling over one hundred cases of NCR related cases show proofs that NCR lands had been taken, grabbed and snatched all these years, under the BN government, headed by the present CM Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud.

Despite the landmark decision in the case of Nor Anak Nyawai which was affirmed by Madeli Salleh’s case in the Federal Court, (the highest court in Malaysia), the present State BN Government of Sarawak refused to accept the said Court’s decision that NCR Land includes not only “temuda” (secondary forest) but it extends to their “Pemakai menua” (territorial domain) and “Pulau” (reserved or preserved virgin forests). This refusal to accept the Court’s decision is reflected in the State Attorney-General’s Chambers’defences representing the State Government, in these cases now pending hearing in the various High Courts through out the State of Sarawak.

I therefore urge the Honourable Prime Minister, to order, instruct and/or at least advise the present BN State Government through the CM Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud to return to the people all the NCR lands that had been “taken, grabbed and snatched” summarily all these years by revoking timber licences, provisional leases and replanting permit or other licences that includes and/or encroaches onto NCR lands.

Secondly, order that an independent Land Commission of Inquiry be set up to investigate all these violation of claims of NCR lands in Sarawak including the abuses by the police force of complainants relating to NCR disputes with companies, to show to the people of Sarawak, and Malaysian at large that this PM walks his talk.

This Land Commission of Inquiry should also look into all the hundred over cases now pending in the High Courts in Sarawak, thus helping in the backlog of cases in the High Court.

If the above proposal is not done within 1 month from today, I am afraid these statements are mere political gimmicks just to mislead the people in particular the Natives of Sarawak that this BN Government is now concerned with their affairs and problems. I believe these are but signs of the impending State General Election now looming in the horizon.

Lastly, it was also reported that “The Prime Minister said from his discussions with Chief Minister Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud he was convinced that the State’s model of native customary rights land development would ensure a better future for the Dayaks, particularly the Ibans.”

I believe that the State’s model of native customary rights land development referred is the “new way” of developing NCR Land popularly referred to as “The New Concept” or “Konsep Baru” the ‘brain-child’ of the present CM. Under this ‘Konsep Baru’, the landowners would have 30% shares equity, the developer 60% and the State Government 10%.

I am sad to say that the very first project launched in Kanowit based on this concept is a total failure. After 10 years of its launching, the developer is still unsure whether they can break-even in the years ahead thus causing much anxiety and trepidation to the natives who were lured in participating in this project years ago.

I have been instructed by some of these natives to take legal action against the State Government to protect the natives’ right over their NCR lands, as they have no confidence in this so called “Konsep Baru” or as the PM said the “State’s model of native customary rights land development” referred in the news report.

I dare say in the light of my knowledge of these issues, the statements made by the Honourable PM are mere political rhetoric, unless and until we can see in one (1) month time, my suggestion referred above are implemented; i.e. the return of NCR lands that had already been taken away and the setting up of a Land Commission of Inquiry to investigate these complaints of violation of NCR over lands in Sarawak.

This post is the Press Release By Baru Bian on 20 June 2009, in response to the Borneo Post on 19 June, the front page headline exclaimed “We’ll not take away your land: Najib”.

Baru Bian, renowned native customary land rights lawyer now appointed a member in Keadilan’s Political Bureau and Supreme Council, issued a press statement to refute Najib’s tall tale. Save for a Chinese daily, Baru’s statement was ignored.

Do not use the term Dayak, says Joseph Entulu.

Rural and Regional Development Deputy Minister, Datuk Joseph Entulu Belaun, is again reviving the call for the government to consider dropping the term "Dayak". Entulu told reporters after witnessing the installation of the new committee members for the Sarawak Dayak National Union (SDNU) Rajang branch on Saturday night, 9-May-2009.

He said the term should be dropped because it conveyed negative connotations like being uncivilised, uncouth and “low class“. He believes it would be more tactful and exact if specific terminologies like Iban, Bidayuh, Kayan, Kenyah, Kelabit and so forth, be used.

Source: The Star Online

Sarawak Police and Broken Windows

Pak Bui's broken car window post "Crime, Punishment and Torture" on http://hornbillunleashed.wordpress.com/2009/05/01/crime-punishment-and-torture, reminds us of the “Broken Windows” anti-crime policy used by former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, often cited as having reduced crime in the city and ‘cleaned’ it as if by waving a magic wand.

At gatherings of the world’s top cops, the "Broken Windows" theory is often a presentation topic. The Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton built his career on the “broken windows” theory. As New York’s police chief in the mid-1990s, he implemented a quality-of-life initiative to much acclaim, and he campaigned for the top job in L.A. on a “broken windows” platform. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino cracked down on such minor misdemeanor offenses as loud house parties, public drinking and improperly disposed trash, believing that these kinds of community-disorder issues are the precursors to the violent crimes that may follow.

Giuliani and Bratton acted on the insights of the Broken Windows theory to transform New York from one of the most dangerous cities in America to the safest big city in the country by treating minor crimes like vandalism, prostitution, and loitering like broken windows.

Giuliani and Bratton deployed police to where they were most needed using the CompStat (computer statistics) system. And instead of tolerating these crimes and showing weakness to criminals and would-be criminals, the police showed strength. They instituted a “zero tolerance” policy for so-called minor crimes. When other criminals witnessed this show of strength, they were deterred.

Citizens, meanwhile, felt safer walking the streets and taking the subway. They took more responsibility for their neighborhoods and helped make them safer as well.

In the New York case, restoring a sense of order to the streets meant that police didn’t have to spend all their time responding to actual crime. Their show of strength inspired citizens to care more for their own communities and deterred criminals from committing crimes in the first place.

According to the “Broken Windows” theory, every instance of disorder, however small - such as a window broken by vandals - should be dealt with firmly. This sends a message of law enforcement and leads to a reduction in more serious crime, the theory goes. The implementation of this involved the aggressive pursuit of those who committed ‘minor’ infractions, such as painting graffiti, panhandling and jaywalking.

The influential “Broken Windows” theory that was published in a 1982 Atlantic article by James Q. Wilson, a political scientist then at Harvard, and George L. Kelling, a criminologist. The theory suggests that a disorderly environment sends a message that no one is in charge, thus increasing fear, weakening community controls, and inviting criminal behavior. It further maintains that stopping minor offenses and restoring greater order can prevent serious crime.

In 2005, Lowell, USA, was being turned into a real life crime-fighting laboratory to test the theory.
Researchers from Harvard and Suffolk University meticulously recording criminal incidents in each of the hot spots, working with police, identified 34 crime hot spots. In half of them, authorities set to work - clearing trash from the sidewalks, fixing street lights, and sending loiterers scurrying. Abandoned buildings were secured, businesses forced to meet code, and more arrests made for misdemeanors. Mental health services and homeless aid referrals expanded. In the remaining hot spots, normal policing and services continued.

The results were striking: A 20 percent plunge in calls to police from the parts of town that received extra attention. It is seen as strong scientific evidence that the “broken windows” theory really works - that disorderly conditions breed bad behavior, and that fixing them can help prevent crime.
The Lowell experiment offers guidance on what seems to work best. Cleaning up the physical environment was very effective; misdemeanor arrests less so, and boosting social services had no apparent impact.

This seems to be a solid basis for a policing strategy that preemptively addresses the conditions that promote crime. In traditional policing, cops go from call to call, chasing their own tail.

I trust that PDRM does have an effective policing strategy. Any lessons we can learn from Rakan Cop?

Free Universal High Quality Education for Sarawakians

Free access to high quality learning resources is something that I believe many of us Sarawakians would never have thought could be real. Today, it's our new weapon for mass education, and great quality.

YouTube EDU and Academic Earth have done well in spreading learning.

This is welcome news for students and families around the world who have had little educational choice in the past, except that provided by the public sector. It is globalisation bringing education to students across the world, shortening the distance between countries and bringing quality lectures to emerging and developed nations.

Given that we are entering into the Web 2.0 era, Google has an opportunity to go further in upsetting status quo. It can do so by launching, in tandem with YouTube EDU, contests and small prizes for students to enrich the core material.

Opportunities for improvement include creating and sharing translations, mini-case studies, transcriptions, and slides to accompany the courses. Winners of such contests can be chosen through a combination of peer voting and expert review to ensure accuracy of the proposed enhancements.

Precedents exist for engaging students from poor communities in creation of eLearning resources. At http://www.openworld.com and http://www.entrepreneurialschools.com, sample YouTube clips and online work-study research projects show what students in extremely impoverished, war-torn areas of the world can do in response to small (USD30) microscholarships, vouchers, and prizes.

Billons of camera phones capable of recording and sharing short video clips are heading to impoverished areas of the world in the next few years.

If YouTube EDU opts to encourage co-creation opportunities for students, a wealth of new eLearning resources may be generated by media-capable students who are now shortchanged by 19th century-style schools.

This may create an grassroots opportunity for new, market-sensitive learning ventures to flourish.

In line with its “Education anywhere and anytime” vision, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) imparts on students, courses on public health, art, music and various other subjects through mobile phones. IGNOU now serves about 1.8 million students in India and 32 countries abroad through 21 Schools of Studies and an elaborate network of 58 Regional centres, 1804 study centres, and 49 overseas centres.

Looking at the mobile phone penetration in Malaysia, we can think of using the medium to impart education. Education and technology cannot be seen separately. Following IGNOU's steps in spreading learning to rural India, Malaysia can likewise, take education, especially vocational education, to our kampongs through mobile handsets.

IGNOU believes in imparting quality education to the masses. These easily accessible modules would be implemented in collaboration with the Communication and Manufacturing Association of India. The courses are offered through text, video and graphics mode. IGNOU would also provide public health courses on nutrition, public health, AIDS awareness, and many other educational contents. Furthermore, students do not have to pay anything extra for the new service.

YouTube EDU launched, on 26 March 2009, an educational hub “volunteer project sparked by a group of employees who wanted to find a better way to collect and highlight all the great educational content being uploaded to YouTube by colleges and universities”. The site is aggregating videos from dozens of colleges and universities, ranging from lectures to student films to athletic events. Some of this stuff is solid gold (the Stanford and MIT lectures are really good).

Academic Earth is an organization building a platform for video and other educational resources from top universities, think tanks, and conferences. The company has the stated goal of “giving everyone on earth access to a world-class education.”

Academic Earth offers 60 full courses and 2,395 total lectures (almost 1300 hours of video) from Yale, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Princeton that can be browsed by subject, university, or instructor through a user-friendly interface. Additionally, editors have compiled lectures from different speakers into Playlists such as “Understanding the Financial Crisis” and “First Day Of Freshman Year.” The site also features a roster of famous guest lecturers on entrepreneurship and technology including Larry Page, Carol Bartz, Tim Draper, Elon Musk, and Guy Kawasaki.

These aren't radically new ideas. Fora.TV and BigThink both offer intellectual video content online. iTunes U hosts a lot of university content as well. Unlike Big Think, Academic Earth isn’t creating original content, it’s just repurposing existing academic content. And Fora.TV seems to focus more on speeches and public lectures. But Academic Earth has the right plan around providing free course lectures. You can watch an entire semester’s worth of lectures in a few days.

Fellow Sarawakians, you know what to do.

Sarawak's Future for Middle-Skill Jobs

Source: SCAN www.tiny.cc/sarawakcan
Based on 9MP figures, can our future generations have sustainable livelihood from secure income and long-term employability? From analysis of 9MP figures and global trends, few conclusions and recommendations can be derived related to Sarawak's human capital development and sustainable livelihood of its people now and in the future.

One key area to take a hard look at is middle-skill jobs. A range of new government policies could help low-income workers obtain more education and training for middle-skill jobs, thereby raising their earnings and their family’s living standards. At the same time, the new Sarawak state government must generate new demand for middle-skill workers, by developing key sectors of the state's economy and by implementing new economic, social and educational policies.

What are middle-skill jobs?

Classifying occupations into a few skill categories is awkward, given the many elements of skill required for most jobs. Under an approach that classifies jobs based on education and training levels, “middle-skill” jobs are those that generally require some education and training beyond secondary school but less than a bachelor’s degree. These post-secondary education or training requirements can include diplomas, vocational certificates, significant on-the-job training, previous work experience, or some college, but less than a bachelor’s degree.

We divide the broad occupational groups into high-skill, middle-skill, and low-skill categories based on Statistics Dept's estimates of the educational attainment and training of people in those jobs. Using this information, we define:


* High-skill occupations as those in the professional/technical and managerial categories.

* Low-skill occupations as those in the service and agricultural categories.

* Middle-skill occupations as all the others, including clerical, sales, construction, installation/repair, production, and transportation/material moving.


This definition is clearly imperfect, since there are many professional/technical and service jobs that are clearly middle-skill while there are jobs in the clerical, sales and other categories that are not; but, on average, these discrepancies tend to cancel out, and trends in these categories roughly capture the ones SCAN wants to focus on.

Salary Trends based on SCAN's Analysis

When wages as well as employment grow faster than average for a given skill group, the implication is that labuor market demand is rising more rapidly for workers in that skill category than for other workers. For workers in middle-skill jobs, recent wage patterns paint a complex picture.

The annual earnings gap between workers with college degrees versus workers with secondary school certs has certainly widened for over 30 years, although it did not increase at all between 2000 and 2006 for full-time workers above age 24. Those with associate degrees now earn, per year of education, a similar wage premium over those with only a secondary cert. In 2006, the median worker with an associate degree earned about 33 percent more than those with only a diploma, while those with a BA degree and no graduate degree earned 62 percent more.

Turning to occupational differences, several middle-skill occupations have experienced rapid wage increases in recent years. In the eight years between 1997 and 2005, the average Sarawakian worker had an overall inflation-adjusted wage increase of only about 5 percent.

Certainly, not all positions in middle-skill occupations pay well or are well-situated on career paths that promise wage advancement and not all middle-skill positions experienced healthy increases in real wages after the late 1990s. In some categories not requiring post-secondary education or training, wage increases lagged behind the average. But the figures indicate that demand for-many middle-skill occupations is rising well enough to generate not only strong employment growth, but also growth in wages.

Job Projections based on SCAN's Analysis

Using its estimates of educational requirements for jobs, SCAN projects that nearly half (about 45 percent) of all job openings in the next 10 years will be in the broad occupational categories that are mostly middle-skill. Another 33 percent will be in the high-skill occupational categories, with the remaining 22 percent in the low-skill (service) occupations.

SCAN projects that Malaysia's net growth in professional and managerial jobs as well as in service jobs will exceed net growth in middle occupational categories. But steady growth in the middle categories is still expected. For example, net job growth in the broad fields of transportation, construction, and maintenance/repair is projected at 11 to 12 percent over the next decade, only slightly below expected average growth for all jobs (12.9 percent).

The projections for detailed occupations point to average or above-average growth in several high-wage job categories that require education and training at the middle level.

All in all, these projections demonstrate that ample employment opportunities will remain in a variety of good-paying jobs in the middle of the labor market over the next decade and beyond.

Sarawak's Future Supply of Skills

Using education as a proxy for skills, SCAN's projections indicate a slowdown in the growth of skills over the next two decades, at both the top and middle of the labour market. In fact, the slowdown in growth among workers with some college education exceeds the slowdown among workers with a bachelor’s degree or more.

This slowdown might not fully materialize, for some reasons such as; if more educated workers choose to retire, if more young people or adults choose to attend college or participate in long-term training, or if more highly educated Malaysians enter Sarawak (perhaps due to changing immigration laws). But some slowdown in educational growth is almost certain to occur.

Another consideration is that educational attainment patterns may understate skill mismatches because of the limited numbers who qualify for specific occupations in high demand. Openings for registered nurses, for example, are expected to jump dramatically over the next 10 to 15 years. Having enough workers with general education at the BA or sub-BA level will do little to meet the increasing demand for nurses unless enough workers obtain the relevant occupational qualifications. Without initiatives to better link the emerging occupational requirements with the education and training obtained by current and future workers, employers will have to import workers or alter their production strategy in ways that may eliminate potentially good jobs.

Policy Implications for The New Sarawak State Government

All these means that the new Sarawak state government under Pakatan Rakyat will need to develop new economic, human capital and education policies that are seamless aligned towards generating sustainable livelihood and better income for Sarawakians.

Complementing government policies, employers will adjust to tight labor markets in a variety of ways - such as with higher wages, more aggressive recruitment, and more selective screening. They will likely also invest more in training. But these investments take time and significant resources.

Furthermore, private sector training investments by firms are often limited by a variety of market failures that lead to suboptimal investments, especially among less-educated workers. These market failures include imperfect or asymmetric information between employers and employees, liquidity constraints in capital markets, and wage rigidities that prevent employers from financing training partly through lower wages. Another reason for under-investment is that employers who train workers fear they will be unable to recoup their investment if other firms hire workers away once they are trained, Under-investments in employer-led training seem to plague less-educated workers.

These market failures might lead to lowered worker performance and productivity in some sectors in the absence of sound policy responses. And the education and earnings levels of disadvantaged workers will also remain below the levels that could have been achieved with appropriate policy measures. The likely short supply of workers in several key sectors offers opportunities to improve the earnings of disadvantaged workers. In particular, low-income kampong youth or adults can raise their earnings substantially and fill many middle-level jobs by undertaking training and post-secondary education. The result will be to improve efficiency and equity in the labor market.

How might this be accomplished? For the kampong or rural youth - especially those in school - it means expanding opportunities for high-quality career and technical education. Options include career academies or vocational training schools, which have demonstrated positive impacts on the earnings of youth and especially rural young men. Other options include technical schools and “Career Pathway” models, which provide ladders into certain well-paying occupational clusters based on school curricula and work experience, beginning in secondary school (or earlier) and continuing into post-secondary education.

For adults, effective approaches involve supplementing education or training, with enhanced links to employers in sectors with strong growth in middle-skill jobs. These approaches should include job search and follow-up services. Often, community or technical colleges, as well as private career colleges, can deliver the relevant education and training.

Labor market intermediaries can play a useful role in coordinating these components and developing connections with employers through “sectoral” training or “career ladders” that attach rural and disadvantaged adults to these sectors and provide pathways of instruction qualifying them for specific occupations and industries. To be effective, intermediaries sometimes must offer stipends during the period of study, as well as child care, transportation, and job placement services. Financial enhancements afterwards might still be needed to incent these workers to remain attached to the labor market.

Expanding apprenticeships is a particularly attractive option for upgrading the careers of both young and experienced workers. Apprenticeship training culminates in career-related and portable credentials that are recognized and respected by employers. It relies mostly on learning in context, an effective method for teaching technical and broader skills, such as communication and problem-solving.

Workers earn salaries during their training, which is particularly appealing to kampong and disadvantaged adults and youth. Sarawak's and even Malaysia's apprenticeship system is underdeveloped relative to systems in other countries, and very few Sarawakian workers are registered with any apprenticeship system. The new Sarawak state government will need to develop and fund an effective apprenticeship system.

How might these and other education and training efforts be financed? Establishment of an occupational training fund would be an important first step. The fund covers occupational training at accredited colleges only for rural youth and disadvantaged workers. One approach would be to allow the fund to provide grants to extend to shorter term training programs and to finance the classroom instruction used in registered apprenticeship programs.

Another option is to use federal government funds from the PTPTN to finance training, an approach that may require changes in how occupational training counts towards the PTPTN application requirements.

Establishment of specific funding to help finance programs for rural and disadvantaged adults. This funding could be accomplished through formula funding or through a new competitive grants program. In this proposal, grants would be awarded to districts to build comprehensive “advancement systems” for the rural kampongs that focus on education and training, pathways that link private employers to training providers and workers, and appropriate financial supports and services. The grants would match new local council or district expenditures and require a great deal of rigorous evaluation. Financial incentives would also be provided for strong performance and for taking programs to scale at the state level (that is, making them large enough to affect earnings outcomes of a substantial share of workers).

These developments must be done together with and in consideration of the development of rural industries.

Whatever exact paths are taken, the labour market data reviewed by SCAN suggest that demand for workers in the middle of the skill distribution will remain quite strong for the foreseeable future, and that policies designed to train more rural and disadvantaged youth and adults for these jobs are a good bet.

Note:
This paper is developed by SCAN for leaders and members only. Data used in the development of this paper have been taken and analysed from government publications such as the Ninth Malaysia Plan (9MP) and Dept of Statistics publications. Information provided here are SCAN's analysis.

Invest In Innovation, Not 12 Dams

More important than spending money on 12 new dams in Sarawak is really the need to invest in innovation. Sarawakians concerned with the well-being of the future generations to come must seriously think about what is really needed. Otherwise, we continue to become a liability to the future generations.

I am recommending that the hottest stimuli for Sarawak's future prosperity is investment in innovation, not in another dam. Failure to do so, future Sarawakians will be beggars in their own land despite the wealth of natural resources today. Because besides Korea, Japan and Taiwan, China & India will be important centers of innovation in the coming decades, leaving Sarawakians to live on scraps in the region.

Not only are both China & India producing a rising share of key technological innovations, but they are also pioneering innovations in business models that allow their companies to prosper in low-income markets. These new models tend to be capital light while heavily leveraging technology. The companies employing them produce goods and services at surprisingly low cost and use the vast scale of home markets to create new technology standards. These are practices that companies in neighboring nations will need to watch closely as they attempt to grow their competitiveness and as they meet new competitors from both countries in global markets.

Education levels are rising in both countries. China and India have world-class technical universities and produce a steady flow of talent at the top of the world’s academic pyramid. In addition, both cultures reward entrepreneurial risk taking. Innovators in China and India possess immense drive and desire to succeed. Their commitment and focus on business execution make them notable entrepreneurs on the global stage. It helps that both China and India allow successful people to retain much of the wealth they create, though both governments expect contributions back to broader society from those who become millionaires or even billionaires.

What is the situation in Sarawak? Firstly, our education system is failing us, educating us out of our inherent creativity. As the government builds infrastructure in the rural areas, GDP growth remains in the urban. Indigenous technologies is unheard of, not even in the farming or timber sectors which are the main economic activities in the state. In Sarawak, revenues from natural resources can be allocated to the benefit of seeding innovations rather than being pocketed by a few individuals.

India's flexible local entrepreneurs are creating new models that bake in low-income levels. ICICI Bank is a good example. Making intensive use of technology, it has created a banking model with capital outlays that are one-tenth those of banks in the developed world. ICICI reaches deeply into India’s rural areas using mobile ATMs and simplified Internet banking. It runs a booming and profitable business in remittances at fee levels that undercut Western Union by 70 percent. Health Management Research Institute (HMRI), meanwhile, uses technology to revolutionize medical services. Paramedics rove through rural areas in vans coordinated by GPS. Routine ailments can be efficiently diagnosed with the help of algorithms; more difficult diagnoses can be provided by remote medical experts via a video kiosk in each van. HMRI can already serve over 50 million patients.

China selects and invests in what it believes are next-generation sectors—biotechnology, electric vehicles, and clean energy. These are markets where China’s domestic demand could lead the world. The government’s goal is to accelerate the market’s development and nurture national champions. In telecom, where the Chinese market is already one of the world’s largest, the government is encouraging national standards that it hopes will eventually define the global industry.

Can Sarawak build & sustain China's & India's innovation pace and eventually move to the next level of technological innovation? Absolutely. The talent is there, as are capital and effective new government that encourages it. With stronger protection and rewards for intellectual property — a likely development as international companies begin to license technology from Sarawakian entrepreneurs — the stage will be set for the next step forward.

Sarawak must wake up to the realization that investing in innovation is more critical than the 12 dams. The most innovative countries — which will also be the highest earning in the future — will be those that embrace a model of “innovation economics,” which places technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship at the center of economic policymaking. Successful nations will not be content to wait for innovation to happen or expect it to occur as a byproduct of other activities, such as rural development or dam building.

On the contrary: the new leaders will search out innovation and actively create an environment that nurtures it. That is the job description of Sarawak's new leaders when Pakatan Rakyat takes over from BN.

Sources: Alessi, IDEO, NASSCOM, ADB, Global Institute for Human Capital Development

The Bidayuh Agenda for Equal Prosperity

The Bidayuh Today
UNDP statistics reveal that communities living in rural areas of Sarawak are among the worse off when compared to the rest of the country, and often face considerable hardships including securing land rights and other basic rights to development.

Many of the state’s communities such as the Bidayuh have, relatively low human capital, lack ready access to basic amenities and facilities, and because the physical infrastructure is underdeveloped in the areas where they live, they remain poorly connected to markets.

We know that for a strong Sarawak, we need quality human capital across races including minority groups such as the Bidayuh. However, our education system today is failing us. Quality health care fail to reach the majority of Sarawakians who are in the rural areas. GDP growth is concentrated only in major towns, not in the rural areas where most Sarawakians are.

The Bidayuh and other Dayak people have seen escalating erosion to their land tenure held under Sarawak Native Customary Rights (NCR), from first massive logging, and then giant plantations and dam building have robbed many Dayak communities of their land. Without land, the physical survival and the survival of their cultural traditions and ethnic identity are threatened.

Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact Foundation (AIPP) secretary-general Joan Carling urged Malaysia to take up the recommendation by other countries such as Mexico, which raised the issue of poor human rights record with regards to indigenous communities during the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) hearing in Geneva last year.

She said indigenous groups in Malaysia had long been fighting for their right to their native territories, and these struggles continue today. Although Malaysia adopted the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in September 2007, there has been no real change on the ground to address the land-grab issue affecting many indigenous people, such as the Bidayuh.

Bidayuhs are a minority indigenous group in Sarawak. There are about 169,000 Bidayuhs, who constitute some 8% of the state’s population. Most of them live in Kuching, Padawan, Serian, Bau and Lundu areas in the 1st Division.

Bidayuh today remain one of the marginalized indigenous minority groups in Malaysia and represent a population of those living below poverty line. Like the other Dayaks, living mostly in the vast rural areas of Sarawak, many still live without basic amenities such as roads, jetties, clinics, treated drinking water, and electricity. Time for them has stood still since independence in 1963.

Issues of the Bidayuh Today
While the rest of the majority races in Malaysia progress in terms of socio-economic and education, the Bidayuh remain in the fringes of development and some Bidayuh communities live in poverty. Critical and urgent issues facing Bidayuh include:

1. Land are not titled and most Bidayuh are unaware of their rights under common law. Native Customary Rights land has been taken over by the state government for sale and development at any time. As Bidayuh are still dependent on subsistence farming, titled land is necessary to progress to modern farming.

2. Bidayuh participation in both the traditional and modern businesses are poor. This is hampered by limited business opportunity, highly dependent on public spending and government projects and poor networking. Some small sized firms made some inroads in small-scale construction sectors. However, none appears to be able to sustain their business due to easy entry and hence are very competitive.

3. Bidayuh form a large portion of the hardcore poor in Sarawak, living in poor housing with insufficient food supply and lack of access to quality health care, communication and transportation.

4. As most Bidayuh live in the rural areas, they are receiving the poorer quality of education than what people in the urban schools are getting. While good early childhood education is critical to the development of children, rural children are not getting pre-school development that urban children are getting. This leaves Bidayuh children to continue to lag behind others in education.

5. The high number of Bidayuh children not getting entrance into public institutions of higher learning, give rise to more Bidayuh children being left behind in the knowledge economy.

What Bidayuh Need to Achieve Equal Progress
There is widespread resentment among Bidayuh that they continue to be marginalized and continue to be left on the fringes of development. To achieve equal progress with other races, equal opportunities and privileges must be given to Bidayuh. The following are critical for the state government to provide the Bidayuh in order to achieve progress:

1. Immediate halt to indiscriminate acquisition of untitled native land by the state government.

2. Expedite the issuing of titles to all native land.

3. Allocate native land that have been designated as state land to Bidayuh families as temporary occupation for a minimum of 60 years for the purpose of modern farming. Land not developed within 3 years are to be taken back and allocated to other families.

4. Establish a well-funded and appropriately staffed Farming Program for Bidayuh that will among other things, do the following:

I. Provide financial aid to Bidayuh families to develop their land for modern farming. Access to the aid must be easy and mechanism for repayment must also be easy.

II. In addition to providing financial aid, the government must also provide quality professional assistance to upgrade the knowledge and skills of Bidayuh families on modern farming.

III. Encourage Young People to Become Farmers: The Farming Program will establish a new program to identify and train the next generation of farmers. The program will also provide incentives to make it easier for new farmers to afford their first farm.

IV. Encourage Organic and Local Agriculture: The Farming Program for Bidayuh will help organic farmers afford to certify their crops and will also promote regional food systems.

V. Strong Safety Net for Family Farmers: The Farming Program for Bidayuh will provide family farmers with stability and predictability and strengthen producer protections to ensure family farmers have fair access to markets, control over their production decisions, and transparency in prices.

VI. Support Small Business Development: The Farming Program for Bidayuh will provide capital for family farmers to create value-added enterprises, like cooperative marketing initiatives and farmer-owned processing plants. They also will establish a small business and micro-enterprise initiative for rural Bidayuh kampongs.

5. Improve Rural Education for Bidayuh: From the moment our children step into a classroom, the single most important factor in determining their achievement is their teacher. To improve the quality of education that Bidayuh children are receiving, the state government must provide incentives for talented individuals to enter the teaching profession, including increased pay for teachers who work in rural areas.

The government must create a Rural Revitalization Program to attract and retain young people to rural Bidayuh kampongs. More quality community colleges should be created and increase research and educational funding for community colleges in Bidayuh areas. Early childhood development centres must be established in Bidayuh kampongs and staffed by only trained and qualified professionals. The government must ensure all rural Bidayuh children have access to pre-school; provide affordable and high-quality child care that will promote child development and ease the burden on working families.

The government must ensure competent, effective teachers in rural schools that are organized for success. The government should provide service scholarships to recruit and prepare teachers who commit to working in underserved Bidayuh dominated districts. To support teachers, the government must foster ongoing improvements in teacher education, provide mentoring for beginning teachers, create incentives for shared planning and learning time for teachers.

To retain teachers, the government must support career pathways that provide ongoing professional development and reward accomplished teachers for their expertise. An initiative must be taken to help eliminate teacher shortages in hard-to-staff areas and subjects, improve teacher retention rates, strengthen teacher preparation programs, improve professional development, and better utilize and reward accomplished teachers.

6. Increase the number of seats for Bidayuh students in public institutions of higher learning: In order for the Bidayuh community to come to equal progress in education with other races, more places should be allocated for the Bidayuh students in local public colleges and universities.

7. Improve Health Care for Bidayuh Communities: Rural health care providers are often less experienced and do not have access to the latest medical and healthcare practices in order to deliver the best clinical outcome. Rural folks have to come to Kuching city to get better medical treatment and that is often when illness become more serious. The government must increase rural access to quality care by promoting health information technologies like telemedicine and staff rural clinics and hospitals with more experienced and better trained physicians and nurses. A Nurse-Family Partnership should be established to all Bidayuh, first-time mothers each year. The Nurse-Family Partnership provides home visits by trained registered nurses to Bidayuh expectant mothers and their families in Bidayuh kampongs.

8. Establish a Bidayuh Business Development Assistance Program: As Bidayuh community lags far behind in participation in business and entrepreneurship, the Bidayuh need specific business development assistance. The assistance program will include allocation of government infrastructure projects to Bidayuh community, allocation of business premises in strategic locations and access to financial aid and grants. Rural infrastructure projects must be allocated to local Bidayuh contractors.

9. Expand Access to Jobs: The government must invest in transitional jobs and career pathway programs that implement proven methods of helping low-income Bidayuh succeed in the workforce. The government must also create a program to directly engage disadvantaged youth in job opportunities to strengthen their communities, while also providing them with practical skills in important high-growth career field.

10. Establish At Least 20 Promise Bidayuh Kampongs: The government must create at least 20 Promise Bidayuh Kampongs in areas that have high levels of poverty and low levels of student academic achievement in Bidayuh dominated districts. The Promise Bidayuh Kampongs have a full network of services, including early childhood education, youth development efforts and after-school activities, to an entire kampong from birth to college.

The government should work with community and business leaders to identify and address the unique economic development barriers of every one of the 20 Promise Bidayuh Kampongs. The government will provide additional resources to address community needs.

The government, by implementing all of the above with full commitment on a sustainable basis, can help bring the Bidayuh community on equal progress with other races. As Bidayuh progress, Sarawak and the nation thrives. The nation will be strengthened for further prosperity.

What do we do as an individual Bidayuh? On our own, we may not be able to change the future, but we can invent it through out collective effort. The power is in our hands. We owe it to the future generations to make the change. We must because we can.

Taib Mahmud's Dynasty Another Splash of Wealth

Jamilah Taib, daughter of Taib Mahmud (Chief Minister of Sarawak) and her husband, Sean Murray own the 2nd most most expensive private residences in Ottawa, Canada.

The couple's house at 688 Manor Ave. in Rockcliffe Park, worth $9,609,000, equivalent to RM28,331,251.00. Read more here.

URGENT! Taib Mahmud Must Be Removed NOW!

View on YouTube here.

Black Magic Being Used In Batang Ai

In the run-up to the coming Batang Ai by-election, campaigning has taken a supernatural twist with Barisan Nasional leaders warning of dire consequences for breaking longhouses taboo.

Sarawak Deputy Chief Minister, Tan Sri Alfred Jabu and also State Minister for Rural Development and Infrastructure Development and Communications, warned opposition campaigners and native Ibans of “supernatural repercussions” that awaited those who allowed “outsiders” to enter longhouses and villages.

Jabu said that a resident of the longhouse died of mysterious circumstances two days ago after the longhouse folk allowed opposition members to enter their premises to launch a party branch.

“These outsiders do not understand that there are certain sets of rituals that must be strictly adhere to before they can enter the longhouses.

“They must respect these traditional beliefs or else the longhouse folks will suffer from the repercussions,” he said.

Jabu warned longhouse folks not to allow “outsiders” into their premises.

The opposition has accused the Barisan of trying to intimidate the voters ahead of nomination and polling.

Source: The Star Online Saturday, 14-March-2009

Najib just bought DBNA for RM4 mil

A few days ago, Deputy Prime Minister, Najib Tun Razak, gave RM4 million to the Dayak Bidayuh National Association (DBNA). The Sarawak state election is coming soon. Before this, Najib would not have known the existence of people called the Bidayuhs. It is very, very rare that DBNA gets any funding from the federal or state government.

Yesterday, the state government gave RM3.5 million to Bidayuhs in Kampong Opar, Bau. Bidayuhs in Serikin, Bau received RM2.5 million.

RM4 million the price of Bidayuh votes. Bau Bidayuhs cost RM3.5 million. A PKR state assemblyman in Perak costs RM10 million.

That's how cheap Bidayuh vote is. This is an insult to the Bidayuh that cannot be forgiven.

Stateless Sarawakians - Gov't Can't Help

According to State Social Development and Urbanisation Minister Datuk William Mawan, there were "tens of thousands" of Sarawakian natives who were without ICs or personal identification documents.

The federal government has promised to help resolve the long outstanding problem of many "stateless" Sarawakian natives. During a dialogue session with the BN's elected representatives and leaders at Kuching Hilton on Thursday, 12-Feb-2009, Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, said he would bring up the matter at the cabinet meeting to get the relevant ministry to act.

He said the ministry concerned would have to find out if elected representatives and community leaders could help to certify the status of stateless Sarawakians in their applications for MyKad.

Mawan said the SPDP would compile details of the problem and bring them up at the Barisan management committee meeting.

This is so amazing!!! Taib Mahmud and his cronies are too busy enriching themselves that they need Najib to resolve issues that have been in their backyard for almost half a century. And Mawan is only about to compile the details of the problem. Why only NOW?