September 22, 2025
KUALA LUMPUR – WATCHING footage of a house being submerged in mud and debris in the media is one thing. It’s a different, more visceral experience to leave your comfortable living room in Subang Jaya, Selangor, and see a decimated home for yourself in Kampung Sarapung, Penampang, Sabah.
That house, damaged by a landslide on Sept 11, belongs to my 44-year-old nephew, Oliver Golingai.
“It was once a beautiful place we called home – filled with laughter, the screams of naughty kids, my pride, my life, and above all, love,” he posted on Facebook.
“Now I let God decide if it will still be the place I once called home.”
Being on the ground reveals the fear and suffering victims of natural disasters experience. One moment, Oliver saw a small mudslide just 2m from his kitchen. Next, as he was telling his children to evacuate, boulders began rolling down. “We ran like something was chasing us,” Oliver told the media, a statement that underscores his and his children’s lucky escape.
The floods and landslides Sabah has been subjected to this past week have led to a confirmed 14 deaths across the state, with one fatality in Penampang. The sheer scale of the disaster drew immediate attention from political leaders.
Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, Sabah Chief Minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor, and Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives Minister Datuk Ewon Benedick went to see the damage firsthand at Kampung Sarapung. Other politicians also visited separately, including Opposition figures like former Sabah chief minister Shafie Apdal and his Parti Warisan deputy president, Datuk Darell Leiking.
Their visits were widely shared in my Sabah messaging groups, and raised a big question: Who is to blame for the disaster?
In the ensuing blame game, some people pointed to the Prime Minister, while others faulted local politicians like Leiking, the Moyog assemblyman, or current Penampang MP Benedick. Blame also fell on political parties, with critics divided between the Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) state government and Parti Warisan, which ruled the state from 2018 to 2020.
Others pointed to the ongoing Pan Borneo Highway construction, a massive project to upgrade the state’s road network, as a cause. And some blamed God.
Ultimately, who is blamed often depends on the blamer’s political affiliation.
Sometimes the most vocal critics are those without a degree in flood mitigation who believe their common sense makes sense. They post videos and offer opinions on the flooding without a clear understanding of the underlying issues, and their “expert” opinions in chat groups often have a hidden political agenda.
To understand the perennial flooding problem in Penampang, where residents worry their homes will be deluged by water whenever there’s heavy rain, I spoke with Leiking.
The former minister of Inter-national Trade and Industry explained that after Warisan took office in May 2018, the state government prioritised flood mitigation efforts that had already been facing delays due to utility and land issues.
“We directed local authorities to clean drains to improve water flow. We also worked with federal counterparts to ensure continuous funding and to address new challenges like landslides,” he said.
“Now in Opposition, we continue to demand action and highlight new dynamics, like hillside erosion that contributed to recent flooding.”
On why the RM800mil flood mitigation (phase two and three) efforts could not solve the flooding, a Department of Irrigation and Drainage officer – who is not authorised to speak to the media and so must remain anonymous – explained that one of the reasons is delays in implementation due to difficulty in acquiring land and relocating utilities. For example, moving squatter houses along Sungai Moyog in Putatan district and power cables in Donggongon town.
Benedick has leveraged his influence as a minister to gain the support of his Cabinet colleagues in addressing the repeated flooding of the river, which has an eponymous state seat named after it. For example, the Penampang MP arranged for Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Fadillah Yusof to see the river’s bottlenecks for himself to reinforce the problem’s scope. He has also helped to settle the squatters who had previously refused to move.
The YBs of the Moyog state seat and the Penampang parliamentary constituency have been working behind the scenes, yet some voters claim they are not doing anything, unaware of their actual efforts.
What is heart-wrenching for me is the effort by Sabahans and even a Singaporean friend to help the victims.
What is missing for Richard Ker, a fellow Sabahan, is the response from big corporations.
“When the Klang Valley flooded in 2021, many KL-based corporates posted updates, support messages, and began donation drives almost immediately,” he posted on Facebook.
“Now Sabah is facing one of its worst floods in years. At least 13 lives have been lost. Thousands displaced. Many communities are cut off.
Ker continued, “And yet … silence on social media from some of the same corporates despite having huge operations in Sabah. Oil and gas. Banking. Property. Plantations. Construction. Telco.
“Maybe I missed the news. Maybe they are working quietly behind the scenes. I hope they are,” he said.
For me, it is not too late for big corporations to help people like my nephew Oliver, who lost the beautiful place he called home.