SEB’s ‘Generous’ School Bus For Murum!

Sarawak Energy (SEB) has been pouring out self-congratulatory propaganda for weeks, praising its own ‘generosity’ and ‘kindness’ towards the Penan people, who were thrust from their homelands and forced into resettlements by the Murum Dam.

So just take a look at this – SEB’s transport provision for children aged 7-12 years old for their daily half hour journey to the nearest school building to their forced settlement!

Today, the independent radio station Radio Free Sarawak aired exclusive interviews with local parents dismayed by the danger facing their young children.

Their report revealed how each day 20-30 children are crammed into this dangerous vehicle to stand unsecured in the open back of the truck, as it skids and weaves down unmade logging tracks towards the now abandoned SEB construction office that serves as a makeshift school for the community.

The journey takes at least half an hour each way.

When the rain comes and the logging road gets wet the journey becomes exceedingly treacherous (as well as leaving the children exposed of course) and one nine year old boy has already fallen off the back of this vehicle and badly cut his forehead.

Because there is no clinic or medical support within two hours of this settlement of one thousand people, this wound went untreated, as usual, Sarawak Report has been told.

In his homeland of Norway, which sets the standard that Mr Sjotveit frequently harps on about when he explains the benefits of hydro-power to the community, every school child is by law carefully strapped into an appropriate vehicle to take them to school.

Seat belts and a proper individual safe seat (inside) are rightly expected, in a school bus with a trained driver.

Yet this vehicle, provided as part of the settlement commitment by SEB, is plainly not designed for the task in hand.

Rather it is the private vehicle of one Labang Paneh, who just happens to be the Chairman of the Penan Committee elected to negotiate with SEB over their conditions and provisions.

Rather than bothering to arrange appropriate school transport for the children of the settlement, SEB appear to have gone no further than agreeing to strike a deal with this useful intermediary, paying him what is reported to be a whacking RM4,000 a month to lend his own personal car to transport all the children to school!

A conflict of interest? Clearly and one that is highly useful to SEB, who it seems prefer to use their largesse to corrupt local representatives, rather than securing the safety and well-being of the children of the community.

And who are the drivers of this ‘school transport bus’?

Well, it appears that various members of the community kindly take their turn at the wheel. None of them hold an actual driving licence, of course, let alone undergone training in carrying large numbers of young children, making the whole enterprise doubly dangerous.

So, now we know the way things are done by SEB under the rigorous guidance of their Norwegian boss, guiding the country towards progress and development!

Fact versus fiction

The outrageous treatment of these children, transported worse than animals in this way, reflects the reality of SEB’s relentless propaganda drive.

Sjotveit has driven his energies into story after story in the newspapers and online, boasting about SEB’s wonderful ‘achievements’, whilst brushing aside the shocking and scandalous discovery that he has for months been hiding the fact that he has installed turbines in Murum, which an expert report described as “not suitable for installation or operation”!

The Murum Dam, which brought so much misery, is not even properly built to work.

Yet here is Sjotveit in the Borneo Post, personally issuing SEB’s own ‘literacy certificates’ to Penan settlers, as if they had actually been taught to read and write in a matter of weeks – or as if the certificates were genuine qualifications that might get them employment in the middle of nowhere at Tegulang:

Look! I taught them to read and write and then gave them a certificate I dreamed up!

The paper reports of course how a spokesman was dragged out once again to show how ‘grateful’ and ‘thankful’ the Penan are to SEB and its kindly owner, the State of Sarawak’ for all it has done over the past half century:

Alex Lenggok, one of the facilitators, disclosed they are very grateful and thankful to Sarawak Energy for this programme, as “at least we have the basics and able to read, speak and count”.

Although they are just basics, Alex believed it will bring a little change among them.

“I hope there will be more others will come forward and assist us to improve the quality and standard of our living. We also want to be like other communities who have gone far ahead,” he added.

Also present was Telang Usan assemblyman Dennis Ngau.[Borneo Post]

So, now Torstein Sjotveit can boast to anyone who listens that he brought literacy to the Penan. Easy!

Others might ask why he did not build a proper school to be ready at their settlement when the Penan moved in, after the years and billions poured into the Murum Dam how come this basic facility had not been built?

And how come no clinic within two hours drive or proper transport to get to it, beyond hitching a logging lorry?

And how come SEB’s chosen contractors to bring food to the stranded community cut the agreed amount to one quarter of the needed supplies by the third month, leaving their leaders with no option but to go to the police to report they were being starved?

Learning agriculture?

And what about the fiction that the Penan, who were driven from their jungles which are being ferociously now logged by Taib’s top crony Shin Yang, are being ‘taught agriculture’ by SEB?

Once again, the papers have been fed pictures of classes and patronising stories about new horizons for these backward jungle folk:

‘receptive to agriculture’ – but they can’t do it back home!

Yet the truth is that the resettled Penan, who were promised land by SEB to embark on growing their own food, are not being allowed to grow anything!

The reason being that the land they have been moved to belongs to another community, who are understandably taking the matter to court and have instructed the Penan that they have no rights in the area!

The area around the resettlements is the Native Customary Land and Temuda of the Long Lawan Kenyah community, who warned SEB four years ago that they had no right to hand it in compensation to the displaced Penan.

The Radio Station RFS interviewed the region’s head men over two years ago on the subject, after they took their protest all the way to Kuching and protested to the State Government.

But still Torstein and SEB went ahead and moved the Penan, telling them there would be farm land at their disposal – in the same way that they have just installed dangerous and faulty turbines, even though they had tested as unsuitable for installation!

The Penan are now forced to live off dried foodstuffs and salted fish, with no fresh vegetables, meat or fruit, the foods that were once abundant in their primary jungles.

They have also complained of an uncertain water supply far from the fresh river that once supplied their needs. And the children who have to endure this half hour journey to school each day are supplied no provisions or water at all during the school day, until they get back home again in the mid-afternoon.

These are the realities, but Torstein Sjotveit has found out that it is far easier to say you have done things in a government controlled press than to actually do them.  So that’s what he does!

Not an example Baram wish to follow

This week the community campaign group Save Rivers released its own findings from a weekend fact finding tour of Murum and Bakun by natives of Baram, who are next on the list for resettlement, so SEB can build a Baram Dam.

It was the campaigners’ answer to the lavish trips organised by SEB for Baram community leaders to see the Three Gorges Dam in China and speak to ‘ordinary Chinese citizens’, who were reported praising their ‘wonderful new life’ in resettled communities.

This is what the Penan spokesman had to say to the Baram visitors about their resettlement locally in Sarawak.  You will not read this in the Borneo Post, but the full press release can be accessed on our Campaigns Page:

The Penan Community Leader, Mr. Panai Erang of Ba Abang, in commenting on the promised Bandar Baru Baram (new township) made to the people of Baram for their resettlement area, took the resettlement area of Tegulang as a proof of empty promises. He said that in Tegulang there is no school, no clinic, police station, agriculture department or government office as promised to the people before they move. The long stretch of road to the resettlement area is mud road which not well maintained. “SEB told us that the resettlement area for Murum is of world class, making it sound heavenly,” said Panai, “ but what we saw was disappointing,” he added. The comment made by Nugang from Long Liam is “the promises by the government to the people in Tegulang  is empty promises.”

Believe Torstein Sjotveit and the Borneo Post if you want to – or take a look at how Penan school children are forced to go to school. -Sarawak Report