1530: Felda settlers, who have contributed much to the nation’s economy, pour into the Sukaham building to highlight their plight. 1415: Scores of Felda settlers have turned up at Suhakam to submit a memorandum listing out their problems and demands.
Few are aware that the Penang Malay Chamber of Commerce (DPMMPP) has had three current office bearers successively appointed to an allotted seat in the Penang Island Municipal Council (MPPP) since 2008. Ironically, a DPMMPP leader was involved in the racially charged 5 Feb protest over allegedly discriminatory Council enforcement action against Malay hawkers and food-stalls operators on Penang Island. The Penang government had allotted one seat to the DPMMPP and another to the Penang Chinese Chamber of Commerce in the MPPP. For 2008, the DPMMPP rep in the Council was Rizal Faris Mohideen, currently the head of DPMMPP. (Rizal was one of the speakers at the protest on Friday.) His successor as MPPP councillor in March 2009 was Yasir Hafiz Munawar Ali, currently the DPMMPP honorary assistant secretary. The present rep in the Council is Ali Akhbar Mohd Noor, a businessman and DPMMPP exco member.
The Sentul-based activist James Arunasalam passed away on 22 January. He championed the cause of the poor – Photo by Tian Chua
On 4 December 2009, Sime Darby Bhd, through its plantation arm, Sime Darby Plantation Sdn Bhd, bought the entire issued and paid-up capital (50,000 shares of RM1 each) of an obscure new company, Nature Ambience Sdn Bhd, for RM16.8 million. What makes Nature Ambience, which was incorporated only a year ago (on 12 December 2008), so special? Although it will become an oil palm plantation firm, a company search reveals its nature of business to be “general trading”. On 2 October 2009, the Ministry of Land Development, Sarawak granted Nature Ambience approval to be the investor/developer for 26,211ha of Native Customary Rights land in Kapit and Julau, Sarawak. This was reportedly in line with the Sarawak state government’s “new concept of development on NCR land”. The Ministry is headed by James Masing, who is also the state assembly member for Balleh, one of the constituencies in Kapit. With its purchase [Read more]
The descendants of settlers from Kwangchow have been waiting a dozen years for the compensation they were promised after they were forced to vacate their family homes along Jalan Raja Uda in Butterworth to make way for a major property development project. Photos by Anil Netto – click icon on bottom right to toggle to full-screen slideshow mode Today, their temporary concrete and zinc-roofed homes are rapidly decaying while the elusive agreed compensation – 800 sq ft three-bedroom medium-cost apartments – is nowhere in sight. Since the mid-1990s, over 300 households scattered over 50 acres have lost their family homes to the Raja Uda Commercial Centre project in Butterworth. This project comprises rows of new shophouses, each priced at between RM500,000 to RM1 million, fronting both sides of a one-kilometre stretch of Jalan Raja Uda towards the intersection with Jalan Telaga Air/Jalan Siram.