A FATHER is forced to dig for tapioca to feed his starving children, for whom rice is now a luxury. No, this is no recounting of a wartime story in Malaya. Rather, this is everyday life for more than 400,000 Sabahans, especially those living in the rural areas.

"This is what you call poverty," says outspoken Tawau parliamentarian Datuk Dr Chua Soon Bui.

"I know a family where they have 11 children, they cannot even send one child to school, because the father only earns about RM400, and at the end of the month, they can't afford to have a lot of rice, so they will go and get tapioca from the field, mix with the rice and cook for the children. Even rice becomes a luxury to them," she tells fz.com in a recent interview.

With a population of over 3 million, of which 27 percent are foreigners, Sabahans' lot in life is certainly far from rosy.

With a poverty rate of 19.7 percent, approximately one in five people here are struggling to eek out a living. This, in a state rich in natural resources, such as oil and gas as well as timber.

Yet Sabah is the poorest state in Malaysia, and its poverty rate dwarfs that of the national average of 3.8 percent.

Chua tells fz.com that some of the rural folk in Sabah are so poor, they can only afford to buy a strip of oil or sauce from nearby sundry shop - and not in a bottle we, from the peninsula, are used to.

"When you are talking about poverty, what do you mean? It is their daily life... when you go to the kampung, you will see strips of oil, strip of ketchup, they put it in a strip of plastic, they will buy like RM2 of rice, or one strip of oil, maybe about RM0.50, and the soya sauce is about RM0.20, so they are actually surviving from hand to mouth," she explains.

Chua in July had proposed that the government set up a Royal Commission of Inquiry to look into the high poverty rate in Sabah.

She made the call following the release of the Statistics Department's latest figures for Sabah, which show little progress in reducing the poverty level in the state. In contrast, the state with the second highest poverty rate, Perlis, recorded only 6%.

Unfortunately, Chua's RCI call fell on deaf ears, but she is determined that people know the dire needs of the state which has very poor infrastructure.

Even a simple thing like attending school can be an insurmountable obstacle in Sabah. Due to the high transport costs, parents in the rural areas cannot afford to send their children to school. So despite the free education offered by the government, the children are denied a chance to learn due to poverty.

Youth unemployment
Apart from rural poverty, the two term MP from the Sabah Progressive Party (SAPP) said the rising urban poverty and youth unemployment rate (5.6%) is going to trigger a series of social problems.

Unemployed youth will loiter around and get involved in gang fights, or worse, end up a drug addict, she opines. Methamphetamine, known as "Ice", smuggled in from the south Philippines, is the most common drug used.

Chua feels that instead of giving RM200 handouts to youths to purchase smartphones, the government should provide skills training to them so that they can secure a job, especially in the oil and gas industry.

She says Sabah's inability to attract foreign direct investment to create job opportunities and training for youths is down to its poor infrastructure.

The federal government has not done enough in this regard, she says.

Chua can be critical of the Federal government, now that SAPP has pulled out of the alliance. (SAPP pulled out in September 2008, leaving its two MPs - the other is Datuk Eric Enchin Majimbun (Sepangar) -- as independents).

She is also free to voice out another bugbear -- the perceived discrimination against locals in the public service. Sabahans, she says, rarely get a chance to be promoted as most senior posts are held by offices from Peninsular Malaysia.

This, she says, is inconsistent with the 20 point agreement signed when Sabah, Sarawak, Singapore and Malaya formed Malaysia in 1963.

"All this time (in) Sabah, we are talking about autonomy; we want the government agencies based here to be administered by Sabahans."

Under the agreement, "Borneanisation" of the public service will let qualified local officers filling up the posts in the public service.

Cabotage Policy a burden
So, with a high inflation and youth unemployment rate, the last thing Sabahans need is to be burdened by a high cost of living. But that's exactly what they have to contend with.

Prices of goods are typically 25 to 40 percent higher in Sabah then in Peninsular Malaysia, Chua claimed.

She points to the Cabotage policy implemented since 1980 as one of the causes. Under the policy, all the domestic transport of foreign goods can only be done by Malaysian vessels. In other words, foreign cargo ships are only allowed to unload their cargo at Port Klang, and goods destined for Sabah have to be sent by Malaysian registered feeder vessels, who can charge whatever they want as the prices are not controlled by the government.

The policy also ensures that ships from Hong Kong and Vietnam are not allowed to offload goods at Sabah ports even though the ports are much closer than them having to go to Port Klang first.

"This policy is unfair. The Transport Ministry should fully liberalize (it), so that they (foreign cargo ship) can go from port to port, rather than from designated port only. It has limited not the in flow of cargo and also outflow of cargo.

"If you are a manufacturer, how are you going to ship out your product? You may need to double your cost… that means we are not competitive enough," said Chua, who added that the problem was something the government knows about but has no political will to do.

Budget is Peninsular centric
Chua also lamented the recent budget is Peninsular Malaysia-centric, as the business sector in Sabah does not benefit from it.

In the Budget 2013, government allocated RM100 million to Sabah and Sarawak to supply 40,000 plastic water tanks for rural folks to harvest rain water. This works out to be RM2,500 per tank, Chua pointed out, when the price of a 400 gallon water tank is only RM400, and the local supplier can supply the tanks at a fairer price.

Another instance is the RM87 million allocation to set up 57 Kedai Rakyat 1Malaysia in Sabah, Sarawak and Labuan; ostensibly a grocery store in every parliamentary constituency to benefit the people so that they can get cheaper products. However, Chua alleged that the local transporters who want to register to transport the products are rejected as the majority of the transporter quota is reserved for Peninsular transporters.

"You want to help Sabah; you should help the transporter, not monopolise it and leave a little bit to the people of Sabah, which is not right," she bristles.

"A growing economy has a snowballing effect; it has to start from one place and move to another, everybody is getting some gains along the chain, that is how you boost the economy. But that's not the case here - all the benefits are here (Peninsular Malaysia), we only get the end product."

Chua feels that the allocations from the government do not trickle down to the right people, as the bureaucracy in the middle "thinks this one is voting for opposition and as such, no need to help them".

This lack of trickle down effect is perhaps the biggest failure of the BN administration, she reckons, adding that the budget or the current populist policies do not tackle the root of the problems faced by the people.

This story first appeared in fz.com on Nov 5, 2012.