Upon hearing of the Sarawak government’s RM4.3 billion plans for the Murum Dam in 2013, the Penan villagers carried out a month-long blockade of the project, attracting media attention.
The state government and dam developer Sarawak Energy Berhad (SEB) eventually reached out and promised some form of recompense and aid for the villagers.
However, it seems these promises have so far proven largely insincere.
Penan spokesman Gereng Jadong, 28, said the villagers now struggle to maintain their livelihoods in the heavily developed Mentalun area, where thick forests has been levelled by logging companies or replaced by oil palm plantations.
“We chose to resettle to Mentalun because we know the area. However, we didn’t expect that the area would be targeted by these companies,” Gereng explained to FMT yesterday during his visit with several other Penan representatives to Peninsular Malaysia.
Gereng said the villagers relied on the forest and river as sources of food and water, but which were now despoiled by development.
“Now we have to scrabble on whatever little land we can farm. We can’t rely on the river for water — that’s the worst source of water we have right now, as the logging upstream has made it dirty,” Gereng said, speaking thickly-accented Malay.
The villagers now have to rely on rainwater, which doctors have said is responsible for their poor health. The occasional droughts send them eight hours away to Bintulu to buy water supplies.
Before their resettlement in 2013, they had presented SEB and the state government with a list of demands of recompensation, which stipulated that they be paid RM500,000 and 15 hectares of land per family, and that the government provide them with the necessary infrastructure, such as a clinic, a school, and proper roads from their village to neighbouring Bintulu.
“They openly agreed to the requests for the clinic, school and roads. They only nodded and said yes to everything else. Janji mulut sahaja (verbal promises only),” said Gereng, who confirmed also that no black-and-white agreement had been signed between them and the government for these requests.
Even then, these requests were not fulfilled.
“We have no clinic. The nearest one is in Sg Asap, around four to five hours away. A proper hospital would be in Bintulu, eight hours away.”
Only rough logging roads are available to the villagers, which makes travel between areas an arduous ordeal. The only school available to the villagers is a primary school set up in one of SEB’s old offices in the area, which has around 100 students from the surrounding communities.
The Penan villagers were relocated in 2013 from their original longhouses in Long Luar, Long Menapa, Long Tangau and Long Singu, all within the dam’s impoundment area, to new longhouses in Mentalun.
Due to problems with the government’s resettlement registration process, a few families were left out, forcing them to look for places of their own.
More recently, the villagers said they had been short-changed on promises of monetary aid.
“The government district office promised us RM850 per family for the next five years. It was not something that we asked for,” Gereng clarified. “However, they later changed the deal to RM250 in cash and RM600 worth of food supplies. The supplies came in the form of foodstuffs such as rice, sugar, and instant noodles.
“The problem now is that the supplies don’t seem to be worth RM600 at all. Macam tidak setimpal (not equivalent).”
Gereng said the supplies are brought in by car from a shopowner in Bintulu, but that they did not know how the whole matter was arranged and carried out.
“We don’t know what the arrangement is. Where is the money coming from? Who handles it?” Gereng said.
After three years, not much has been done to ease their plight.