Sarawak, Malaysia Villagers Reject Eviction for Dam Project
6/16/99
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Title: RIGHTS-MALAYSIA: Villagers Reject Eviction for Dam Project
Source: InterPress Service
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: June 16, 1999
Byline: R Mageswary
KUCHING, Malaysia, Jun 16 (IPS) - Many of his neighbours have been
moved out, and hundreds more families living near the Balui River
area here in Eastern Sarawak province are scheduled for resettlement
in the following weeks.
But 70-year-old Batok Bagi says he is staying put in the house his
family has had for generations in the village of Batu Kalo, despite a
local government directive that the area must be emptied of people by
August.
Work on the Bakun Dam project, located at the Balui River site, is
apparently about to pick up again after a prolonged lull.
Yet even during the project slowdown, Sarawak authorities had already
begun implementing 'Operation Exodus' to resettle the estimated
10,000 residents of the area in the next several weeks.
Bagi himself has been to the resettlement site chosen by the local
officials in Asap, five hours from his home in Batu Kalo, and even
lived in one of the new houses provided them there.
But he has elected to return to his old home and now insists he will
stay there, no matter what.
''It is so small and has already started to rot,'' Bagi says of his
family's longhouse at the Asap resettlement area, when talking to
activists last month. ''We also cannot stand the smell there
especially when it rains.''
Activists, in fact, have been asking why Sarawak officials are still
pushing through with the wholesale resettlement of the residents at
the Bakun Dam site.
After all, Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has announced that the
project's power generating capacity would be downscaled from 2,400
megawatts to some 500 megawatts.
The original capacity -- aimed at making Bakun South-east Asia's
biggest dam -- would have required the flooding of some 70,000
hectares of forests and cultivated fields, leading to the
displacement of all the area's residents.
''Now that the dam has been downsized,'' said a statement released
Jun 10 by Dr Kua Kia Soong for the Coalition of Concerned NGOs on
Bakun, ''why should the same number of people be displaced?''
Activists say local officials seem to be in too much of a rush to
empty the area. Said the Coalition statement: ''One would have
thought that, if the Sarawak government had followed the
recommendations of its consultants in the Bakun Hydroelectric
Project, the resettlement would have been put off as long as
possible, until just before the reservoir is flooded.''
So far, work at the dam remains minimal. Kuala Lumpur did say,
though, that the dam is scheduled for completion by 2002.
In contrast to the sluggish pace at the dam itself, Sarawak officials
are whipping up a frenzy in getting Bakun residents resettled. But
critics say the breakneck speed has taken a toll in the planning and
carrying out of the resettlement process.
The new longhouses, for instance, have proved to be too small for the
resettlers, who usually have extended families and are used to having
homes twice the size of the residences the Sarawak government has
built for them.
The resettlement houses also have no rooms, their toilets and
bathrooms have asbestos sheets, and the wood used for the structures
is unfinished. Some resettlers say the stairs of one longhouse gave
way when a man with a sack of rice climbed them.
To make matters worse, residents are expected to pay premium prices
for these houses. At the height of the public furore over Bakun Dam a
few years ago, dam developer Ting Pek Khiing had said the people who
would have to move would be given free housing, electricity and
water.
But that has not happened. Instead, the Sarawak government put a
price tag of 52,000 ringgit (about 13,684 U.S. dollars) for each new
longhouse, but did not furnish the ''buyers'' with sale and purchase
agreements.
And while the resettlers do not have to make payments on the houses
for the next five years, they are expected to begin doing so after
that, at 300 ringgit (79 dollars) a month.
Observers have pointed out that a low-cost house in the peninsula
would fetch about 6,700 dollars. The houses have also yet to be given
the required Certificate of Fitness, apparently because their design
has been deemed defective.
''The indigenous people are not getting a fair deal,'' says activist
Zaitun Kassim, who was part of a fact-finding team on Bakun organised
by NGOs last month.
She worries that the resettlers will not be able to pay for the
houses and utilities since ''they have been displaced from a
subsistence and part-cash economy to a total cash economy''.
In their former home, the Bakun people hunted in the forests as well
as harvested the wild fruits there for food. They also practised
swidden farming. But Kassim says the new site does not offer anything
close to that, and the soil is even infertile.
There is one oil palm company in the area, but it has just planted
seedlings, and it may take at least five years before the firm needs
labour for the harvest work.
The resettlers had also been promised three hectares for every
household. But each family has ended up with only 1.2 hectares of
land, which can be reached only after a three-hour walk. There are no
roads and only four-wheel drives can make the trip there.
Says one 82-year-old: ''I have not even seen my land as it is so far
away.''
Kassim says that resettlers have been living off compensation money,
now fast getting depleted. Most have yet to receive the remaining 70
percent of the amount promised them as crops and displacement
allowance.
Kassim adds that the way some compensation sums were calculated is
worrisome. ''For example,'' she says, ''a 55-year-old man received a
cheque for .90 ringgit (23 cents) for his ancestral land.''
By end-June, the NGO fact-finding mission will submit a report on
Bakun to the federal and state governments.
Meanwhile, the Sarawak government has been closing down schools and
clinics in the Bakun area and cutting off electricity to the
communities of Long Jawie, Long Bulan, Batu Keling and Long Geng to
get people to move out.
Sarawak Chief Minister Taid Mahmud says the government has provided
enough facilities for the resettlers. ''We have taken care of their
welfare,'' he explains. (END/IPS/ap-en- Origin: Manila/RIGHTS-
MALAYSIA/