My first visit to Ba Kelalan in 1985 was by Malaysia Airlines’ small Twin Otter aircraft — a small and noisy 16-seater flying machine.
I was on a mission to write about a case of strange tongues of bright ethereal lights seen hovering in the sky around the Lun Bawang village of fervent Borneo Evangelical Mission (BEM) Christians.
It was former missionary turned politician Datuk Joseph Balan Seling who excited my imagination when he showed me a tape of natives dressed in white, hands raised to the sky, as the dancing lights appeared.
Armed with the video tape, I shared the film with the then chief minister Tun Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud and his wife Puan Sri Hajah Laila Taib and he challenged me to check it out.
This was the story I had been waiting for — the coming of UFOs to Sarawak and that was how my eyes were opened to the poor communication system in rural Sarawak.
Since then I must have flown and driven on some of the remotest roads to inaccessible villages no less than 50 times.
Until today, the Twin Otter is the fastest means of travel into the interior because it is the cheapest form of travel. Unless you are prepared to hire a 4WD vehicle at a cost of RM1,000 to RM2,000 and take that back-breaking journey.
So it was interesting to learn that MASwings had proposed to raise the price of air travel into rural airports by 10-fold starting Nov 1.
They wanted to charge an exorbitant price of RM1,037 on foreigners for a return ticket from Miri to Bario. This sparked an uproar in Bario because if MASwings went ahead with the plan, the 33 homestay operators would suffer.
The good news is that thanks to the intervention of Transport Minister Datuk Lee Kim Shin, MASwings decided to call off this proposal.
Lee, who is from Miri, said the plan to raise the price of air tickets to rural Sarawak was irrational and would have “serious repercussions” on the tourism industry.
The company had proposed to raise the price of a return ticket for a 10-minute flight from Miri to Marudi from the current RM180 to RM738.
It beats me how the airline experts came up with those magic figure, but it takes less than RM100 to take the hour-long drive from Miri to Marudi.
And to add to the woes of Sarawak’s Tourism Ministry, MASwings had planned to charge RM1,386 for a return ticket from Kuching to Mulu where the world famous Mulu Caves are located.
Further north, a short trip from Miri to Lawas, a trip I often used, will have been raised from RM200 to RM922.
Since the federal Works Minister and Ba Kelalan assemblyman Baru Bian is a Lun Bawang native whose constituents have spent almost 60 years on the most miserable road system, I wonder who made the suggestion to raise the cost of rural travel!
Rurum Kelabit Association president Dr Philip Raja was happy that the price-hike plan has been aborted, because the grand 75th World War Two celebration in Bario will not be postponed.
He said a large group of Australians and New Zealanders connected to the famous Allied Forces landings at Bario on March 25, 1945 were having second thoughts about attending.
Even if they had no option but to drive all the way to Bario, it would have taken anything between 12 and 16 hours by the rugged and slippery timber track to reach their destination.
I’ve used the rugged road from Miri to Bario once as a 69-year-old, but as much as I enjoyed the trip, my body took the bumps and knocks on the uneven jungle trail.
I’ve travelled often enough on the Lawas-Ba Kelalan road to testify that we have some of the worst roads in Malaysia.
Even though Baru Bian has enough experience to share his tales about the condition of the roads in northern Sarawak, I wonder if he has ever conveyed this to his Kuala Lumpur counterparts.
I wonder if the venerated federal Transport Minister Anthony Loke has ever travelled the old rugged roads or even flown to any of Sarawak’s rural airstrips in a MASwings Twin Otter — first class.
Better still I would suggest that Baru Bian take Loke on a roundtrip road journey, dust, dirt and all, from Miri to the remote Baram outposts to appreciate the plight of the rural native!
I hope you enjoy the countryside dear YB!
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the New Sarawak Tribune.
