Hydro Tasmania’s role in Sarawak’s dam projects is “diminishing”, the company said in a statement yesterday.

“The business currently has five people on secondment working in Sarawak for the publicly-owned Sarawak Energy Berhad (SEB) as part of an agreement that has existed since 2010 to help build local skills and capability.

“This will shortly drop to four and all of these will be phased out as their contracts expire,” it said.

The statement also said that the Tasmanian state-owned company is not a key player in Sarawak’s hydropower projects, nor it is working on the Baram Dam project.

It asserts that its involvement in the state is limited and other consultants “have a far greater presence and influence on the future of the project than Hydro Tasmania has ever had”.

azlan These, the statement said, are some of the points made during a meeting between Hydro Tasmania CEO Roy Adair and representatives of NGOs campaigning against the dam projects.

It also said that the NGOs should raise their grievances with SEB, because it had greater influence on the projects.

In its report yesterday, news portal Sarawak Report claimed that this is a withdrawal for Hydro Tasmania and a victory for the NGOs.

“The statement is a major retreat from the position taken earlier in the year by Adair, when he was interviewed for Australian TV’s Dateline programme.  

“At that time he was full of enthusiasm for Tasmania’s involvement in (Sarawak Chief Minister Taib Mahmud’s) extraordinary plans to flood tens of thousands of natives from their lands and destroy vast tracts of the Borneo jungle,” the report said.

The NGO Save Sarawak Rivers Network had recently campaigned against the dam projects in Australia, including the meeting with Adair, which is said to be for seeking the company’s commitment to withdraw.