Kota Kinabalu: Sri Tanjong Assemblyman Justin Wong urged Sabah Deputy Chief Minister I Datuk Seri Dr Jeffrey Kitingan to clarify the status of the Nature Conservation Agreement (NCA) in Sabah, claiming that Jeffrey had issued contradictory comments from the Chief Minister.
Wong claimed that, according to recent news reports, Jeffrey had said Sabah would proceed with the NCA for carbon credit sales despite opposition.
“This contradicts Chief Minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor’s statement in December last year who said that the Sabah Government had yet to start the NCA deal due to many technical issues that needed to be resolved,” Wong said.
“Hajiji and Jeffrey are saying different things on the NCA. They have been inconsistent and incoherent about this deal. Jeffrey has the responsibility to explain if the NCA has, indeed, started or not.
“It seems they have different views internally in the Sabah Cabinet. Any statement that comes from any Cabinet member must be consistent and uniform, but what we can see now are discrepancies between Sabah’s number one and number two,” he said in a statement.
Wong also urged Jeffrey to explain why the latter insisted on proceeding with the deal with the controversial deal with Singapore-based company Hoch Standard, especially when Jeffrey had admitted in the Sabah Assembly that he was wrong about Hoch Standard’s US$10 million paid-up capital.
“Hoch Standard’s paid-up capital was US$1,000. How can we not question this company when it is so young and has such small capital? Jeffrey has to at least make us confident about this company since it is going to handle a pilot project involving 600,000 hectares of Sabah’s land.
“You are essentially giving the wrong signal to the public that even a company with 1,000 USD capital can undertake such a huge project,” he said.
Wong also questioned why Jeffrey would still proceed with implementing the NCA deal after the Sabah Attorney-General (AG) Datuk Nor Asiah Mohd Yusof said the NCA was “legally impotent” in February 2022.
Jeffrey, the Chairman of the Steering and Management Committee for the Implementation of the NCA, was recently reported to have alleged that certain non-governmental organisations (NGOs) attempted to mislead indigenous people in Sabah into rejecting carbon trading.
Wong said he believed the NGOs were not intending to deceive people, but rather acting in response to the Sabah government’s contradictory statements.
“Like me, I feel the NGOs were merely seeking transparency and a thorough explanation of the NCA. The NCA is not a minor issue; it is critical to Sabah since it requires managing carbon credit sales of two million hectares of forest reserves for 100 years,” he said.
