A landslide questions the safety of tourist resorts and their legality

A big landslide on December 1 at Sabah’s main mountain road has highlighted a threat to the Borneo state’s 4-billion-ringgit-a-year tourism industry and questioned the safety of dozens of small hotels, chalets and lodging houses that are built mostly on shifting slopes of Kundasang highlands in the Crocker mountain range.

The avalanche at a height of about 1,200m about 65 km from Kota Kinabalu stranded thousands of people including tourists who had to miss their flight home as there is no other road for them to travel from Kundasang to Kota Kinabalu. The road links the state capital to the east coast Sandakan town.

At a seminar on highland development on the day of the landslide, tourism, culture and environment minister Masidi Manjun said a disaster was just waiting to happen at Kundasang that could wipe out tourism – the state’s third biggest earner.

The Crocker, a young mountain range, is prone to earth movement which causes frequent landslides particularly during heavy rain.

He said almost all (85%) of highland development at Kundasang, a popular tourist resort, 6 km from the Kinabalu National Park, was haphazard. Mr Masidi said that many of the buildings were not built according to by-laws because Kundasang did not come under a district council’s supervision until seven years ago.

Although Kundasang is in Ranau district and about a driving distance of 10 minutes from Ranau town, the Ranau district council did not rate it until 2002, according to Jupiring Ruhimin, the council's executive officer.

Mr Masidi’s revelation has also raised questions of whether buildings at Kundasang, many of them built more than 30 years ago, are legal. They include the 92-room Mount Kinabalu Heritage Resort and Spa (formerly Perkasa Kundasang), Sabah’s first 7-storey mountain hotel built in 1979, schools and shop houses.

He told Insight Sabah that he didn’t think the by-laws would be applied retrospectively on Kundasang buildings. “But the local council can withhold renewal of business licences until the building owners take remedial steps to improve the safety of their buildings,” he said.

Mr Masidi is more concerned with hotels, chalets and lodging houses on the slopes of Kundasang. He has directed the Ranau district office to advise their owners to carry out building work to conform to by-laws. – Insight Sabah

– with reporting by Jacqueline Gom