Licensed plantations deny employing gangsters

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KUCHING: The two licensed oil palm plantation developers in Melikin, Serian, have denied engaging gangsters.

They also deny encroaching on the Native Customary Rights (NCR) land of eight villages in the area.

A spokesman for one of the planters also clarified that the two companies were not at loggerheads over anything and that they confined their activities to within the framework of the law.

As such, he said, it was unfair to accuse them of engaging thugs to intimidate villagers.

He said queries over who and why people engaged thugs to log trees in the NCR land of these villages and whether action had been taken over illegal logging should be directed to the relevant authorities, including the Forest Department.

The spokesman was commenting on Land Development Minister Tan Sri Dr James  Jemut Masing’s statement that villagers were caught in the crossfire of a dispute between two plantation companies over logging in Melikin.

According to the villagers, problems and criminal intimidation had occurred when  thugs were unhappy that villagers were trying to protect their NCR land and  water catchment area from pollution following illegal logging.

They said apart from the police and Forest Department, the Natural Resources and Environment Board (NREB) should also take immediate action as inaction would encourage fear and intimidation.

On several claims that the police and Forest Department were unable to find any illegal felling during their previous probes, the villagers said it was because the  authorities had gone during the day.

They also claimed the encroachment in Melikin occurred after logging was conducted in Engkarangan (at the border of Melikin and Kedup).

Masing said the state government is taking the intimidation experienced by the villagers in their own villages seriously and that their police reports and visual evidence would be handed over to police in Bukit Aman and also the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Corporation (MACC) for further action.