PENAMPANG: The people of Kampung Tambatuon need a lot of assistance from the government but it is definitely not a dam.
Head of Tambatuon village action committee, Jahim Singkui, 45, said the paddy fields in the village needed proper irrigation to allow the villagers to plant paddy twice a year, and they also needed a proper road to connect their orchard to the main road.
Jahim said the people had proposed repeatedly to the government on these two requirements – road to the orchard and irrigation to the paddy fields, but there had been no reply until today.
“All of us, about 900 people in the village, are very comfortable in our own land. We have about 300 acres of paddy fields, nearly 1,000 acres of rubber plantation and about 50 acres of orchard area. These are our economic sources.
“It is clear that we are opposing the RM450 million Tambatuon Dam not because we don’t want development but Tambatuon is the only village that we have since the past 14 generations,” he said.
The son of a former village head of Kampung Tambatuon also said that he had been to Sarawak to talk to the people about the Bakun Dam but the only story that he heard was disappointment.
He said the people of Kampung Tambatuon were not interested in any compensation because the Bakun Dam had disappointed the people of Sarawak.
Jahim said this to The Borneo Post during a national inquiry on customary land rights of the indigenous people organized by the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) at the Tun Fuad Stephens Hall here yesterday.
He said a few individuals came to their village two years ago claiming themselves to be tourists doing research on the village, but were found out that they were lying.
“We feel cheated when we saw in the newspapers that those people were researchers appointed by the government to do research in our village on the proposed dam.
“We do not allow outsiders to come to our village to do any more research on this project because we do not see any reason to give them an opportunity to do their job as they had cheated us once,” he said.
According to Jahim, the villagers have been waiting for their own leaders to come and explain about the project so that they could have a better understanding but there had been no effort from the government to consult the people.
He said the people of Kampung Tambatuon are very upset with the statements of certain leaders who only use the media as their medium to explain to Sabahans about the project and in a language that not everyone of them in the village could understand.
“Instead of using the newspapers or other media to explain to Sabahans about the project, why don’t they come to our village and explain to us?
“Some of the government leaders, namely Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Yahya Hussin, Kota Belud member of parliament Abdul Rahman Dahlan, Tempasuk assemblyman Datuk Musbah Jamli, Datuk Herbert Timbun Lagadan and a few others came to our village on June 10 but never explained anything to the people about the project.
“The came to our village just for a little while, fed the fish at our ‘tagal’ river, took pictures and left. We only managed to hand over a memorandum opposing the project but never received any response until now,” said Jahim.
Since the government had never given any explanation on the project, Jahim said the villagers were inviting their leaders to come for a dialogue on July 2, together with Pacos Trust, the Sabah Environmental Protection Association (SEPA), SUHAKAM and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to discuss further on the project.
He said the villagers needed a proper understanding on the project and the government should also listen to their stand as the indigenous people of Sabah.