Menang Sorak, Kampung Tergadai

There are still schools without chairs, villages without electricity, rivers without bridges and families without food.

There’s so much that Sabah needs in order to rise from the current doldrums.

Above everything else though, Sabah needs a band of sincere and capable local leaders to open the eyes of the local people.

Instead, what Sabah gets are



Menang Sorak, Kampung Tergadai


Daily Express August 28th 2008 carries a quarter-page report on how Sabahan quartet One Nation Emcees has done Sabah and Malaysia proud.

Personally, it is with utter sadness when I read such columns on how Sabahans bring glory to their land through singing, singing and singing.

Such news reports glorify the wrong people and send a terribly wrong message to Sabahan youths.

A visitor to Sabah will inescapably marvel at how much development is taking place in Kota Kinabalu and the progress Sabah has made over the last fifty years.

Once upon a time, I too was conned by the apparent advancement and growth that Sabah has made.

As a resident of Sabah however and especially one seeing the poorest folks from the districts, I can only echo the sentiments of the so-called opposition parties lamenting the sad state of Sabah in reality.

A jobless youth with no skills or knowledge is more of the norm rather than the exception in the districts.

An unschooled 24-year-old mother of six is nothing surprising.

Children dropping out of school as early as Primary Six do not raise an eyebrow.

Elderly folks’ waiting by the dusty roadside of Pitas for a Good Samaritan to offer a compassionate ride to Kota Marudu is an everyday affair.

Patients with perforated stomach ulcer for a week before reaching the hospital are not jaw-dropping news.

There are still schools without chairs, villages without electricity, rivers without bridges and families without food.

There’s so much that Sabah needs in order to rise from the current doldrums.

Above everything else though, Sabah needs a band of sincere and capable local leaders to open the eyes of the local people.

Instead, what Sabah gets are endless pretty faces singing factitiously about the beauty of life and death in the poorest state of Malaysia.

As the Malay saying goes, menang sorak, kampung tergadai – the somewhat equivalent of Nero’s fiddling as Rome burns.