In the remote Malaysian jungle, lives uprooted by giant dam
Copyright 2001 Associated Press
September 15, 2001
By ROHAN SULLIVAN; Associated Press Writer
SUNGAI ASAP, Malaysia - Uyan Apoi sits cross-legged on the verandah of her new home, splitting cane for weaving baskets and mats. Her pierced earlobes, stretched almost to her shoulders, swing back and forth as she leans to her work.
"There is no river here," says Uyan, who's in her 60s but doesn't know her exact age. "Finding daily food is difficult. There is no hunting ground, no fishing." Uyan and her family are among about 10,000 tribal people whom the Malaysian government is moving off their traditional lands on Borneo island in the mountains rising above the Balui River to make way for the massive Bakun Dam.
A pet enterprise of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, the 10 billion ringgit (dlrs 2.63 billion) project in central Sarawak state includes a 204-meter-high (670-foot) dam and a 2,400 megawatt hydroelectric power station.
The dam, to be the biggest in Southeast Asia, will flood 69,640 hectares (172,010 acres) of rainforest - 1 1/2 times the size of Singapore island - and submerge at least 15 villages of the indigenous Iban people.
Environmental and native rights groups say the plan is a disaster that will destroy the habitat of 100 endangered species and wipe out a native culture already battered by rampant logging in the rainforest.
Critics say the dam is also an economic white elephant, being pushed through by Mahathir's pro-development administration even though the hydro station's capacity vastly exceeds the needs of Malaysia's two lightly populated Borneo states.
"From an environmental, economic and social justice standpoint, the dam is unjustified, unnecessary and should not go ahead," said Meenakshi Raman, secretary of Friends of the Earth Malaysia, part of a coalition of nongovernment organizations fighting the project.
Government officials defend the project, saying that it will meet the electricity needs of a growing population and that excess power could be sold.
Plans for a dam in the region, 1,530 kilometers (950 miles) east of Malaysia's economic nerve-center, Kuala Lumpur, date back 20 years. In the early 1990s, Mahathir announced an ambitious scheme to channel power from the mountain hydro station to the coast, then across the South China Sea via 650 kilometers (400 miles) of undersea electrical cables - the world's longest - to the populous Malay peninsula.
The project was shelved in 1997 amid the regional financial crisis, and the Finance Department paid out hundreds of millions of ringgit (tens of millions of dollars) to compensate contractors for cancelled work.
In 1999, a scaled-down version was announced. The expensive cable component was dropped, meaning Sarawak's electricity capacity would be three times its current usage.
Mahathir says that industry and the population on Borneo will grow quickly in the next 10 or 15 years, creating more demand for electricity. In addition, some excess energy might be sold to neighbors Brunei and Indonesia - which both are now self-sufficient in electricity production.
The Sarawak government, a Mahathir ally with links to logging and construction industries, began emptying traditional longhouse villages in the Balui River basin area in 1998.
Residents were moved to resettlement villages, into units in buildings designed to look like their old communal longhouses. They were told they would have to pay 52,000 ringgit (dlrs 13,684) for each unit but would be given compensation for their old homes.
Now the residents complain the government has been slow to set compensation for their old homes or provided only meager payments that make the new homes far too expensive.
In Sungai Asap, a more than three hour drive down a dusty, potholed track from the nearest paved road, residents talk about abandoning the government-built homes and returning to the forest.
They say the three-acre (1.2 hectare) farming plots allocated to each family don't produce enough food to live on. Despite government promises of modernization, there is no running water and schools and other infrastructure are basic.
In a report last year, Friends of the Earth found that compensation money given some villagers for shifting out of their homes quickly ran out and the only work available was laboring on palm oil plantations for 10 ringgit (dlrs 2.63) a day.
"This is the first time in their lives that they have to buy rice, meat, fish, vegetables, electricity and water," the report said. "The cash ran out and the jobs did not come (but) still the natives need to buy and buy."
The rich cultural life of the forest is dying, the report said. People are idle and frustrated. Alcohol and drug abuse are creeping in.
"Life is much harder. In Long Geng we had fruit trees," said Anjan Jok, whose village of Long Geng will be submerged by the dam waters. "Here, the land is not enough to support us."
James Masing, the Sarawak official who heads the resettlement program, refused a request for an interview. But in newspaper reports, he has dismissed complaints that residents of the resettlement villages are living in poverty because of inadequate farm plots and a lack of jobs.
"They are just being lazy, because there are jobs everywhere at the plantations," he told the New Straits Times newspaper.
Despite complaints by environmentalists, the government has avoided holding public hearings on the project and has not released details of its environmental impact assessment.
Environmental groups, including the International Rivers Network based in Berkeley, California, say some of the Malaysian companies bidding on the project's contracts worth billions of dollars are closely linked to the Sarawak government.
On the Balui River, earth moving equipment for the South Korean giant Dong-Ah Construction Industrial Co. is completing final work on massive tunnels that will divert the river's flow while the dam is built.
Nearby, the jungle is reclaiming a deserted village. Heavy-flowering vines twist through the skeletons of decaying longhouses. Canoes and their paddles lie abandoned.