About 189 Sarawak indigenous families who are being displaced due to the Bakun Dam hydroelectric project, claimed that the full payment for their land is being withheld due to their refusal to move to a government-sponsored relocation settlement in Sungai Asap.

According to a resident from Ulu Balui, Garah Jalong, the government is stalling about 70 percent of the compensation promised to the families who were uprooted from their ancestral land in Ulu Balui.

Garah, a Kenyah, was speaking in a public forum entitled 'Victims of Bakun speak out', organised by environmental group Sahabat Alam Malaysia (SAM) at Universiti Malaya in Kuala Lumpur yesterday. He was a part of a six-member delegation who met deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi on Tuesday to air their grievances.

"On TV, the politicians said the government has paid us. Here I bring the proof that it has not," he said, holding up a list of names of families in his longhouse, who have yet to receive the full compensation.

A typical longhouse is occupied by about 30 to 40 families.

Speaking to reporters after the forum, Garah claimed the payment methods are also erratic and arbitrary.

"We are not sure how much was paid as there was no proper explanation given to those affected (in Ulu Balui)," he said.

Expensive longhouses

According to the document Garah brought, the government is supposed to compensate the affected families in several stages. For starters, the government was supposed to pay about 30 percent of the total land value.

"However, the district officer told us that our payments were withheld because we refused to move to Sungai Asap," he said.

Another speaker, Ngajang Midin from the Ukit ethnic group, explained why the remaining families in Ulu Balui were unwilling to move.

"The longhouse unit in Sungai Asap is not only expensive, about RM52,000 each, but it is of inferior quality," he said.

"In less than a year, a lot of families moved out of Sungai Asap and returned to their original land," he revealed.

He added that many Sungai Asap residents ended up in the Bintulu Hospital every month, suffering from illnesses that may have been due to poor sanitary conditions.

Poor workmanship

During the forum, SAM gave a multimedia presentation of photographs depicting the conditions of the longhouses in Sungai Asap settlement, exposing an array of dilapidated staircases, uncollected rubbish piles and bad drainage, among others.

SAM activist Nik Tahirah said that the new settlement longhouses built by British multinational Bucknalls, not only is of poor quality and workmanship, but also did not take into account the traditional needs of the indigenous peoples.

"The common veranda which is vital for communal activities is much narrower. In some houses, stairs have partially collapsed," she said while describing the photographs.

"The residents have to use their own money to renovate or repair the houses," Nik added.

By September 1999, some 9,000 indigenous people from the Kayan, Kenyah, Lahanan, Ukit and Penan ethnic groups had been uprooted from their homes along Hilir Balui to Sungai Asap, about 30km from the Bakun Dam.

According to SAM, the indigenous peoples were given numerous promises of a better life when they were told to move. However, what has transpired since then is a shockingly different picture.

"Asap 'development' so far has proven itself to be a myth," SAM said, adding that the once self-sufficient people are now suffering from distress, dispossession, remorse and poverty.