SJK Chung Hua in Pantu has more Iban than Chinese students

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Kapitan Lee Khin Onn

Kapitan Lee Khin Onn

Lee Yik Khiew

Lee Yik Khiew

SRI AMAN: Though named SJK Chung Hua, Iban students greatly outnumber their Chinese counterparts in this Chinese primary school in Pantu.

Out of the 200 pupils in this school that serves Pantu, Sungai Tenggang and Lachau, 70 per cent of them are Iban and the rest, Chinese.

Kapitan Lee Khin Onn did not find it strange at all as the two races have been so well integrated here that it is difficult to find a pure Chinese or a pure Iban.

Lee himself is a good example. His mother is an Iban while his father originated from China. As a half Iban, he married a local Iban lady. His two sons bear Iban names, though the family celebrates Chinese New Year and not Gawai Dayak.

“This has been how we are. One cannot tell if a person is an Iban or a Chinese in Pantu because the person most likely has both ancestries.

BAT-6B“And in Pantu, you cannot say bad things about others in Iban because everyone here speaks Iban. And similarly, you cannot speak bad things about others in Mandarin because the Iban community here can speak Mandarin,” Lee told BAT 6 yesterday.

According to him, there are about 120 Chinese families in Pantu, Lachau and Sg Tenggang and 200 longhouses in the area.

Meeting Lee at Pantu, a bazaar with 18 shops, he said like other towns, Pantu is facing the problem of young people flocking to cities like Kuching and Kuala Lumpur who only return to Pantu during festive seasons, and the ones left behind are mainly elderly people.

In the early days, Pantu prospered because of the timber industry and pepper planting. In recent years after the depletion of timber resources, the people here are embarking on oil palm cultivation. And as pepper price has gone up, pepper planting though stopped for some years is also picking up and revived. Presently, oil palm and pepper planting are the major economic activities in Pantu.

Lee who used to work for a local coal mining company said coal mining had also been an important resource but the locals were not keen to be involved in it.

“That is why the coal companies here have to employ foreigners. But of course, there are still some locals working there,” said Lee.

Silantik which is 10 minutes from Pantu has been known to be a coal producing area since the Second World War (WWII). Pantu resident Lee Yik Khiew, 59, said during the WWII the Japanese tried to mine the coal at Silantik and ship it out of Sarawak.

“They even built a railway track to send the coal from Silantik to Batang Strap, so that the coal can be shipped from Batang Strap to Kuching, then to Japan.

“However, after they had built the rail road and imported a locomotive head, Japan surrendered. They had to leave Sarawak. So they never really got to use the rail road which they had built,” said Yik Khiew.

Pantu is a sub-district under Sri Aman district. It is situated 65 km from Sri Aman town.

Unlike the popular stopover town of Lachau which is by the roadside, Pantu is situated six km from the junction of Serian-Sri Aman Road.