FOR more than two years, several parties including Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM), have been trying in vain to highlight the predicament of the Bakun-affected communities who were relocated from their homes around the Balui River to the new township of Sungai Asap in the hope that concrete actions to settle the people's complaints on the compensation and resettlement process would soon be taken. Thus in July, six of the affected natives representing the Bakun Region People's Committee (BRPC) flew to Kuala Lumpur to speak to the Deputy Prime Minister and SUHAKAM and the public on their plight.

"THERE have been many appeals made to the Sarawak State Government to rectify the many inadequacies and failings of Sungai Asap and the problems in upstream Sungai Balui. Unfortunately, the State Government has yet to produce effective solutions to remedy the situation. Thus, today we have travelled all the way from Belaga, Sarawak to personally alert you on the problems that we face along with the demands that we have made."

This was the view expressed in the letter by the Bakun Region People's Committee (BRPC), addressed to the Deputy Prime Minister, Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and SUHAKAM Commissioner Tan Sri Dato' Haji Anuar Dato' Haji Zainal Abidin, whom they met on July 3.

BRPC, led by its Chairman, Bato Bagi, highlighted the grievances of the relocated communities in Sungai Asap and families who had chosen to move further upstream and brought forward for the first time, complaints from the local communities along the Belaga River who claimed that their livelihood and properties had been affected by the population pressure from Asap and the development of Bakun-related infrastructure. The other five members of BRPC delegation were Bit Buneng and Saran Imu from the resettlement area and Ngajang Midin, Garah Jalong and Killa Alang, who represented families who had moved further upstream.

A second letter, highlighting the possible downstream impacts of the project, was also sent by a group of concerned citizens from the area of Belaga. Ronald Bete Lahang, a resident of the Belaga town was their representative.

Both letters can be accessed at http://www.surforever.com/sam/sarawak.

In the morning of July 3, the delegation spent around two hours with SUHAKAM commissioners Tan Sri Dato' Haji Anuar and Dr Mohammad Hirman Ritom Abdullah, who recorded all their complaints and later revealed SUHAKAM's plan to visit Asap at the end of July.

In the afternoon, they met with Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi in Putrajaya for more than 45 minutes. The DPM went through the first 11-page letter and the second 4-page letter, point by point together with the delegates and promised to "look into the matter" and talk to the local authorities to see what could be done.

On July 4, the six BRPC members and Ronald Bete spoke at a public forum entitled Bakun Victims Speak Out where the Peninsular public for the first time, had the opportunity to hear for themselves the hardships and uncertainty that plague the Bakun communities. A public petition was also launched during the forum calling for the scrapping of the project based on financial, environmental and social grounds and reiterating the demands made by the affected people to the Government. It also calls for the authorities to return the land on which the people's NCR had been extinguished to the communities.

Oft-repeated complaints
In their letter, BRPC also highlighted several adverse impacts of Bakun to the displaced communities, which had been highlighted by SAM since 1999 with little positive response from the authorities.

Insufficient compensation
BRPC claimed that the survey process on their land had arbitrarily excluded many of their farm patches. The concerned areas were declared as either falling outside the perimeter of survey or was state land, resulting in the people receiving inadequate amounts of compensation money. In addition, there were also complaints of unsettled compensation payment. Worse, the families who had refused to move to Asap were denied 70 percent of the compensation money due to them.

They urged the Government to ensure that the Sarawak Land and Survey Department to re-conduct the survey process before the project proceeds any further to avoid the destruction of evidence when the areas concerned are finally flooded.

Suffering in Sungai Asap
In addition, BRPC demanded the authorities to allocate more land to the people in Asap as each family in the resettlement area was given only three acres of land, some of which is simply infertile or inaccessible. They warned that in the future the plots of land may degrade after repeated cultivation and the small size of the plot may give rise to inheritance conflicts.

They also requested that the people be provided with more job opportunities and work that could pay them more reasonably than the RM15 a day offered by the nearby oil palm plantations.

Due to the problems above, the letter disclosed that families in Uma Ukit and Uma Penan Longhouses had been experiencing food shortages with some families reduced to consuming a diet of rice without meat or fish daily or subsist on rice and salt or just having one meal a day and most of the families had had to spend their compensation money on purchasing food.

In addition, they also demanded that the new but shoddy and poorly constructed homes in Sungai Asap, which are priced at RM52,000 and thus much more expensive than an average low cost home in Kuala Lumpur, be handed to them free of charge as the relocation scheme was clearly involuntary. They also voiced dissatisfaction on their new homes' inferior building material and design and poor workmanship, stressing that "the size of this letter would not be sufficient to list our dissatisfaction with the quality of these houses sold at such unaffordable prices."

However, the compensation for their old homes, which were bigger and built with excellent workmanship, is presently retained by the State to offset the payment for the new homes, without their consent. "This is clearly wrong because such an action has directly denied us the right to choose the location of our new homes ... and access to money that belongs to us."

Their letter also complained that Asap does not have properly constructed roads, a cheap mode of public transport and a secondary school. "As for the children in primary schools, if their parents are unable to afford their transport fares, they are forced to board at the school and thus are separated from their families at such a tender age. In our old homes, our children used to travel to school by boats or on foot."

Thus today, most of the relocated families have run out of their compensation money, are largely jobless and immobile, and are burdened with unsettled water bills. "When access to water supply is cut off, this would certainly cause adverse impacts in our lives. To make things worse, we are also unable to utilise water from the rivers in Asap and Koyan as domestic sewage from our bathrooms flows into them."

Denied upstream choice
Several of the affected families had decided not to move to Asap and instead chose to move further upstream because "we are not convinced that life in Asap will make us better off than before, as promised by the Government. We feel that the location of Asap is not a good choice for us and we believe that we have the right to decide on our future." As a result of this, the authorities are withholding 70 percent of the total compensation money due to them.

BRPC insisted these two issues "involve vastly different kinds of rights and they must not be associated in a manner that can be used against [the people]. We are entitled to be fully compensated as the residents who have moved to Asap because we too have lost our land and properties in our ancestral home. At the same time, we also have the right to choose the location of our new home and must not be forced to move to Asap. The issue of the payment of compensation money should be viewed as being independent from the issue of our refusal to move to Asap."

Stressing that the refusal to move to Asap was made on rational grounds that had been ignored by the authorities, they added that such an action is "a form of coercion that is used to force us to move to Asap," a fact that even shocked Tan Sri Dato' Anuar during the meeting.
Due to all the difficulties that they are facing in the resettlement scheme, many of the settlers today have decided to join the families who had moved upstream. The letter urged the authorities to recognise the people's right to remain in the location of their choice and as such, the location must be provided with basic facilities and services, like schools and clinics for the residents concerned "as the provision of such facilities is the responsibility of a government to its people, regardless of where the people are situated."

Old theme, new issues
Impacts of Bakun on downstream and nearby areas

BRPC also claimed that the authorities had failed to adequately address the varied effects of the project on non-displaced populations. In addition, a citizen group of downstream Belaga has also expressed the people's anxiety over several issues regarding the dam.

Belaga River area
For villagers around the Belaga River, whose homes are located nearby the resettlement scheme, which is 30 km from the dam site, several problems have suddenly begun to trouble them.

Firstly, it was alleged that the development of the Bakun-Tubau Access Road, which is a Bakun infrastructure project, had encroached onto land over which the residents of the Uma Sambop Longhouse hold native customary rights (NCR).

Part of the land was taken without our consent in 1997 and our crops and properties, including houses, have been destroyed by the development of this road. However, we have not been compensated until today," the letter revealed.

BRPC also divulged that in 1996, one of the oil palm plantations that was developed around Asap, supposedly to provide job opportunities to the relocated communities and believed to belong to Ekran, encroached onto the land on which the same longhouse exercises NCR and "until today, we have not been paid any compensation for this loss."

In addition, since the Uma Sambop Longhouse is only around 12 km from Asap, some of the relocated families in an effort to secure their own livelihood, have begun farming outside the resettlement area, inevitably encroaching upon the land owned by Uma Sambop.

"This puts us in a difficult situation. We are fully aware of their present hardships but clearly our rights to our land are also now in jeopardy. If we directly confront them, this would certainly lead to unpleasant conflicts that may have ugly consequences. However, if we continue to remain silent, surely our interests will also be at stake."

BRPC also revealed that the population pressure had also contributed to the depletion of river and forest resources in Belaga and in that area today, "it is getting more and more difficult to obtain meat from hunting, fish from the rivers and rattan from the forest."

Downstream concerns
Meanwhile a group of concerned citizens from Belaga who are residing downstream also handed in their own letter that highlighted their anxiety over the dam's possible impacts on their lives and livelihood. In the letter they expressed their disappointment that the downstream and Belaga town communities had not been identified as adversely affected communities.

The letter drew the authorities' attention to the question of safety since the residents claimed that they had been kept in the dark over the content of the Emergency Rescue Plan (EPR), a plan that was prepared to draw up rescue procedures in the event of any incidence of dam failure. "However until today, we have not been adequately informed on the procedures laid by the EPR."

They contended that the issue was very critical since any unfortunate incidence of dam failure could cause huge financial losses for the communities and put a risk on their safety and lives.

Pointing out to the experiences of other large dams around the world and the report of the World Commission on Dams (WCD) that large dams inevitably will alter the habitat of a river and cause severe negative impacts on downstream communities who depend on the river for their livelihood, they also expressed their apprehension over the dam's impacts on their cultural, social and economic lives.

As of now, the residents' main worry is the pollution of the Belaga River due to pesticides from the newly developed oil palm plantations nearby Asap and Bakun's ongoing construction. They also fear that the reduced water flow may impede the movement of their river transport system.

Thus, besides demanding for more information on the EPR, a study to be carried out to monitor the quality of the Belaga River, actions to halt further degradation of the river and the development of a road system that links Belaga to other areas, the residents also would like a letter of undertaking to be issued to them, that would guarantee that the Government or the developer, will take full responsibility to pay adequate compensation in the event of any incidence of dam failure or loss of income as a result of the degradation in the water quality of Belaga River.

They also requested that the Government begin a comprehensive, open and meaningful consultation process with the downstream communities and until a resolution is reached between the two parties, the development of the dam and the operation of the oil palm plantations must be halted.