What is the beef SALCRA?

Just a few days ago, bids were called to supply the famed and most successful success story of a mainly Dayak Iban outfit, the oil palm entity, Sarawak Land Consolidation and Rehabilitation Authority (SALCRA) with fertilizers in the thousands of metric tonnes.SALCRA is headed, administered and operated by who's who Dayak Ibans in Sarawak. The Chairman, the CEO and almost all its Board of Directors are Dayak Iban Ministers.The pertinent question is why is SALCRA sourcing for such fertilizers when they have their own huge fertilizer factory in Bintulu? It is just like Cement Manufacturers Sarawak (CMS) calling for bids to supply the giant cement company cement to its factory in Pending, which would make no business sense!

This is where the whole episode unfold!

SALCRA owns a big fertilizer company/factory in Bintulu that has "bitten the dust"!In other simple terms, The Sarawak Fertilizer Sdn Bhd has gone bust, kaput, and now begging the State Government to "bail" her out. The company apparently has ceased operation and is left out cold with close to thirty million in debts.

Sarawak Fertilizer is owned by SALCRA (30%), Yayasan Sarawak(15%), LCDA(15%), LAKMNS(15%),Bio Gift (20%)-J's family, and Duta Crest(5%)-V's family.

How could a fertilizer company that was incorporated to supply its product, fertilizer, to a ready market, like to its biggest shareholder SALCRA, could have
gone bust? Something must have gone terribly wrong.Is there going to be someone taking responsibility for the mess that Sarawak Fertilizer sdn bhd had gone into?
Well, your guess is as good as mine. No one will.

With a huge capital outlay for its operation, plus the mounting trade debts, the bailout and subsequent new injection of funds, ( God knows where the money will be from) the amount of money needed will be mammoth by any standard, considering the plain fact that an entity like SALCRA is sacredly answerable to its Dayak landowner partners, not that SALCRA even cared anyway, based on its poor records of declaring its shared profits in the past.

The Government bailout, whether it is going to be camouflaged as a soft loan (again, to hoodwink the public and taxpayers like you and me)will again, demonstrate that our own people had failed miserably in running a company that is very close to their hearts.The injection of fresh funds will thus relieve the shareholders of their corporate and statue responsibilities, which is a very bad practice and create an unwanted precedent.

But, fret not. The Chief Minister is known to have a very high degree of tolerance towards our Dayak Ministers! Which will push them to be forever indebted and "owning" mode permanently, so that famous fatherly phrase "yang dikashei" will stay relevant in time memorial.