IT was easy to lose yourself amidst the verdant hills that is Cameron Highlands. The air was crisp and fresh, and the lush green bluish peaks were constantly kissed by soft, ribbony clouds.
Days would start with picture-postcard mornings with almost always a thin layer of mist hugging the ground before being burned off by the orange jackhammer of an ascending sun. Rivers flowed unhindered with cold, fresh water cascading down from the mountains. It was a slice of heaven.
These days, Cameron Highlands is the stuff of nightmares. Large areas of blue/green that once covered the mountains have been stripped bare. Some hills now look crinkly and dry, like the skin of a sick, dying old man.
The crisp, fresh mountain air is now filled with thick clouds of swirling dust kicked up by Land Rovers and pickup trucks laden with fresh produce. The rivers, where they flow, would be in the colour of masala tea that had been pumped with too much condensed milk.
In most cases, the streams would be choked with silt and sediment that had built up over the years from the colossal illegal land clearing to feed a ravenous, multi-billion ringgit farming industry and unbridled human greed that refuses to be satiated.
Some years ago, those behind the illegal land clearing would count on the cover of the thick jungle canopy to hide their activities from prying eyes.
These days, they don’t even bother trying. One of the many “tools of the trade” is a document, widely known among highlanders as “surat kuning”.
This document, sans a letterhead, is apparently their ticket to clearing vast tracts of land for farming. Purportedly issued by a “senior officer” in the Pahang royal house and claimed to bear the signature of a prominent Tengku, documents like these are often waved in the faces of officers with the Cameron Highlands Land Office with stomach-churning alacrity, like a hall pass. Investigators insisted, however, that the sultan is not involved.
“The Sultan has nothing to do with this. In many cases, the good name of the palace is dropped with the hope that the authorities would back off out of fear or respect,” one of the sources said.
While these letters are not written in the manner of a directive, the implied message is clear. Woe betide anyone who refuses a “request” from someone who claims to be a senior member of the palace administration.
Sources said an officer with the district office was transferred out after serving just a couple of years because he had refused to play ball.
At a quiet little corner of Tanah Rata, an officer with the Land Office hunches over the table at a coffee shop. The steam from two fresh roti canai wafts in the air. He glances around nervously before uttering a sentence, and when he finally speaks, he chooses his words carefully.
“Some of the top officers are afraid to even go back home. They check into hotels because these ‘farmers’ would knock on their doors in the middle of the night and demand that they approve their applications.
“These rogue businessmen do this because they think no one can touch them.”
The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission had led more than 100 joint operations with other agencies since the year 2000 but still, the problem persists.
Law enforcement agencies had long complained of being shackled, unable to act, citing “interference”. They speak of a confidential file in the district office kept under lock and key.
The MACC, meanwhile, in investigating the problem, had always hit a brick wall because almost invariably, their leads would just fade to black.
The corruption and the abuse of power in the highlands is so systematic, endemic, pervasive and deeply entrenched that the authorities tasked with cleaning up the mess, on more than one occasion, had said they had all but given up, and the residents are resigned to living under the yoke of a privileged few.
Cameron Highlands, despite the influx of foreign workers of every nationality and persuasion imaginable, still has a handful of royalists who accord the palace with the highest of respect.
News of the involvement of a rogue palace official has more than rankled some. They are asking, beseeching, the palace to act to put an end to the corruption and protect the sanctity of the institution.
If the authorities are serious in tackling the problem, then break the shackles that bind our law enforcement agencies.
Prosecute those responsible without fear or favour, no matter what their station in society. Cut the rhetoric and act decisively.
A good place to start would be to conduct an audit of the land areas marked for agriculture and tally this against the 2003-2015 Cameron Highlands development plan. Tracts of land not marked out would stand out like a sore thumb and should be checked.
Temporary occupation licences are a privilege and the state government has every right to take them back. The lands ravaged should be rehabilitated and a robust reforestation programme be put in place. Cameron Highlands sorely needs this.
Only then should we talk about pumping in additional money to clean up this fiasco, like digging up the silt and sedimentation from Cameron’s clogged arteries.
This entire episode should serve as a notice to those who think they can act with impunity.
If nothing is done, the cost — financial, environmental, ecological and human — will be too high to even contemplate.