By K. Govindan BRITAIN'S declining aid budget is being cynically used to secure foreign export orders for the arms industry. Sir Tim Lankester, a senior civil servant attached to the Overseas development Administration (ODA) has confirmed this to a parliamentary select committee.
The controversy was started over the Pergau electric dam in the north-eastern Malaysian state of Kelantan. The dam will cost a total of £400m, of which f234m is British aid money being personally approved by Douglas Hurd and John Major.
Thatcher
Shortly after this package was raised, a record f1 billion arms deal was initialled by the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
Kickbacks and bribery significantly inflated the value of the export order. It is alleged that £60m was donated to the leading government party, UMNO That dam woman again Baru, and that a further £40m greased the palms of several Malaysian officials.
Britain's aid is generally 'tied' 75 per cent must be spent on British goods and services. Thus even if local firms offer cheaper products, the aid recipient has to buy British and thus lots of the money comes back to Britain. Consultants, contractors and engineers will be British even if local expertise is available.
In the case of the Pergau electric dam there was not even a tender to find the cheapest bid The British firm Balfour Beatty was awarded most of the work.
To top it all, the aid was not a grant but a so-called 'soft' loan, repayable over 14 years!
The Pergau dam has been bitterly opposed by local people, environmental groups and opposition parties. It is a long-standing issue of dispute between the Kelantan state government and the federal government. But this is largely a squabble over the division of future revenues.
More serious is the severe economic and environmental dislocation that the 600MW power plant will cause. The reservoir behind the dam will inundate thousands of acres of agricultural land across two states.
Dry up
The dam will also dry up water to downstream areas for at least 10 months a year.
Due to heavy siltation, the dam will only be able to work for about 35 years. Meanwhile thousands of people will lose their farming lands and will be driven away from their villages and communities.
The rising water will threaten this densely forested region including Samatran rhino, tigers and leopards. Lush Malaysian rain forest is being mercilessly destroyed, denuding the land and laying the ground for soil erosion, landslides and calamitous floods.
Protection
Local environmentalists point out that water supply to the dam would only be enough to power a 150MW plant. They argue for a smaller scheme, or at least the adoption of stringent environmental protection.
Malaysia's prime minister Mahathir has given the dam his full backing because a doubling in the country's energy capacity is part of his pet theme, Vision 2020. This aims to make Malaysia a 'fully developed'. country by 2020.
Part and parcel of this process is a growing authoritarianism. control of the mass media, money politics and electoral chicanery.
The arms deal with Britain will beef up Mahathir's repressive machinery.
Socialist LIBERATION