Penampang folk want Kasigui town to be declared a heritage site.
KOTA KINABALU: The time has come for Kasigui, the forgotten "town" of the Kadazans, to be preserved and developed as a heritage site now that the government has decided not to chop down century-old rain trees in the area.
Kasigui native Eric Ye said there was great historical significance in the area, which was once the economic "hub" of Penampang district.
As such, he said, it should be preserved along with the rain trees.
ALSO READ: Penampang folk want imperiled Kasigui 'town' and century-old rain trees preserved
However, he said it was important for the Penampang district council to take care of the five rain trees to ensure that they survive should the area be developed as a heritage site.
"I believe there is a need for the council to employ an arborist (tree surgeon) to assess the health of the trees and take measures, if needed, to restore and rehabilitate them.
"The council should also look into the whole site or perhaps even beyond it and develop it as a heritage site," he said on Monday (April 17).
Ye, like many residents in Penampang, had campaigned for the last five months against chopping down the trees.
Kasigui, which gets its name from the native kasigui tree, is a location where natives from various settlements converged to trade goods during Colonial times.
All that is left of Kasigui now is a small marketplace, a coffee shop and five rain trees estimated to be between 80 and 100 years old.
The place was eventually overshadowed by the modern township of Donggongon.
A social media campaign to save the trees began when the area was proposed to be cleared for road expansion works.
ALSO READ: Century-old rain trees in Kasigui will be spared by road expansion project, says Penampang MP
Ye, who was among those who campaigned to save the trees, said that the 0.2ha site that sits close to the Moyog River should be preserved.
"The authorities should consider enlarging the Kasigui Heritage area," he said, while acknowledging that the trees needed rehabilitation as their roots had limited space to spread.
For Ye, the Kasigui trading post should be retained as a heritage site.
He pointed out that the trees had provided shade and shelter for generations of villagers who came down the river to trade.
Ye and others here remember natives arriving in boats with farm produce and latex sheets that were then transported by road to the Putatan rubber factory, about 10km away.
"Children would meet up and play around Kasigui. It was the main 'town' of Penampang," said the 60-year-old Ye, whose grandparents operated a grocery shop in an old wooden double-storey shophouse that burned down in the 1980s.
"Those rain trees were planted in Colonial times to provide shade," he said, adding that native kasigui trees had long since disappeared.
