Orang Asli villagers in Kampung Bukit Rok and Kampung Ibam in Pahang are grateful that the Bera district land office had evicted a group of settlers on the land claimed by them.

When they visited the site last Saturday, the Orang Asli found that the houses built by the settlers, said to be from Selangor, were demolished by the authorities.

Nothing was left, not even the crops planted by the settlers, on Padang Kepayang - as the area is known to locals.

The villagers have also not seen any trace of the 25 settlers who made their homes on the Orang Asli ancestral land months earlier.

"This is the fruit of hard efficient work by the Bera district land office in giving our ancestral land back to us," said Bukit Rok villager Bob Manolan Mohamad when contacted.

"We, the villagers of Bukit Rok and Ibam express our appreciation and thanks, especially to the Bera district council head," added Manolan, who is also treasurer of the Peninsular Malaysia Orang Asli Association.

According to the villagers, the settlers previously said they had come to Padang Kepayang upon the invitation of "a certain state assembly member who had granted them permission to settle on the land upon filling out certain application forms."

At a meeting on April 22 between community representatives and various state officials, Bera district officers denied the existence of such forms or that they had authorised the settlement exercise.

The officers had also promised to demolish any illegal structures on the land.

Uncertain status

Despite the positive development, another villager, Romani Mohamad, expressed concern that the security of their land remained uncertain.

At last month's meeting, called after the villagers staged a protest over what they claimed was illegal logging operations conducted on their land, state officials were given one month to determine the actual status of the land.

While loggers insisted they had been authorised by the state government to log the land, people from the neighbouring villages claimed that the land had been a Malay Reserve since 1923.

Contacted later, Bera MP Ismail Sabri said the state government had yet to call for a second meeting where it would announce its findings on the land's status.

"We believe that without the effort and cooperation of all parties, our ancestral land will disappear just like that," said Romani in a statement jointly-issued by the village chiefs of Bukit Rok and Ibam.

"We hope the land (containing) Padang Kepayang will be gazetted as a permanent Orang Asli reserve. That will ensure that incidents such as this do not recur," he added.