Villagers in Long Kesseh and other community in the interior of Baram have been reminded not to be hoodwinked and dragged into activities that may bar development and progress from coming to their area.
Regretting the action by the villagers in erecting a blockade in Long Kesseh Baram, Telang Usan assemblyman Dennis Ngau said: “I was made to understand by police in Long Lama that the villagers removed road barriers (erected by GOF) and set up a barricade to stop the workers from constructing an access road which they believed to be leading to the proposed Baram Dam site.”
He added: “There is a big possibility that those involved in removing the road barrier and setting up the blockade could be in the dark about what is really going on at the ground.
They could be influenced and taken for a ride by individuals, NGOs and activities including opposition who claim to champion their rights as an indigenous community of the area.”
Long Lama police reported that they and other authorities have to step in to dismantle the barricade.
Police received a call from Sarawak Forestry Corporation that a logging company given the concession to harvest timber in the area has been denied access to get there.
Dennis Ngau thinks that if people disagree with him then they must have been ‘hoodwinked’.
He should understand that if he is losing the argument, then it is he that is to blame – not ‘NGOs’ or ‘outsiders’ or ‘foreigners’, whom he alleges are ‘taking ‘simple’ locals for a ride’.
The native people are quite right to be dismayed by Dennis’s plans to flood their lands (having stolen all the timber first of course).
It will do them no good at all, as a growing number of studies from top economists and academics around the world are pointing out.
Only a few businessmen and politicians (like Dennis) get to benefit from projects like these. The rest of the community ends up paying.
Dennis Ngau’s conflicts of interest, as a politician whose family has made huge profits from Belian timber concessions, thanks to their BN connections, rule him out as a credible commentator on this matter anyway.
In any law abiding country they would long since have been sent to jail.