Sarawak Energy Berhad said the affected Penan communities of Murum would receive more than RM600,000 per family in compensation for longhouse and infrastructure facilities upon being resettled. In summing up, SEB said the cost involved was RM213.3 million.
Who do we believe? Sarawak Energy’s Torstein Dale Sjotveit says he has paid the Penan refugees from Murum Dam a total of RM213million in ‘compensation’. The Penan are saying (from their ragged tents at the side of the road) that if they had received that sort of money they would not be camped out protesting. While SEB was claiming last week at the UN that they were providing a “massive and immediate improvement” in the lives of the resettled Penan, the news from the ground was that Murum families were being bundled into half built sites with no schools, medical care, farms or any of the other promised benefits of hydro-power generated ‘modernisation’. The Penan say they are suspicious they will now be charged for their supposed free new homes. Who can blame them, since the earlier dam refugees from Batang Ai and Bakun were also promised free homes to begin with and then found the government was demanding payments of thousands of ringgit for this forced accommodation, which turned out to have been shabbily constructed as well?