KUCHING - About 200 Penans and Kenyahs were still manning a blockade they have mounted on the access road to the 944 MW Murum dam in the upper reaches of Batang Murum in Belaga district.
They started putting up the blockade on Sept 26, preventing huge supply trucks and heavy machineries from passing through.
The group said they will only let the trucks pass their blockade if Sarawak Energy chief executive officer Torstein Dale Sjotveit and the Sarawak authorities meet them at the site and agree to their demands.
Sarawak Energy is the agency in charge of the construction of the dam and electricity generation in the state.
Save Rivers Sarawak Network (SAVE Rivers) leader Peter Kallang, when contacted yesterday, said the police have sent their personnel to the blockade site, advising the natives to dismantle the blockade.
"From what I have been informed, the natives are not going to dismantle the blockade until their demands are met," he said.
SAVE Rivers, a Miri-based non-governmental organisation, has been giving moral and other support to the natives.
"We sent food supplies to them yesterday after they called us to say that they run out of food," he said.
The 141mhigh RM4 billion Murum dam, under construction by China's Three Gorges Corporation, affects at least 1,400 people from the ethnic groups of the Western Penan and the Kenyah.
It will start flooding almost 250 sq km of rainforest and farmland once it is completed by early 2013.
The natives have presented an open memorandum to the authorities to solve pending issues concerning their rights to land, forest and the involuntary resettlement.
They are worried they may suffer a similar fate as neighbouring communities who were forcefully displaced by the Bakun dam project in 1998 – loss of livelihood, poverty and loss of culture.
-thesundaily
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