BIG BULLIES IN SARAWAK!

The road leading from Jalan Puncak Borneo into Kampong Bengoh, about 1 hour’s drive away from Kuching used to be a good road. It was tar-sealed and serving the villagers well with their mainly cars.
In case you wonder where it is, Kampong Bengoh is also where the infamous water reservoir dam is being constructed to supply water to Kuching until 2030. Bengoh Dam will flood three villages – Kampong Sait, Bojong Pain and Rejoi – but all four villages, plus Kampong Semban, will be wiped out of the map before the dam is built. But only if the villagers allowed that to be. Their hundreds of years of Bidayuh history (together with the heritage or cultural value, if we care) will be gone if they were uprooted to the proposed Medan Tun Razak Resettlement Scheme few kilometers away from where they are now.
In addition to these kampongs, the road also serves Kampong Danu, another Bidayuh village. However, the section from Kampong Bengoh to Kampong Danu was still a gravel road.

With the construction work beginning late 2008, heavy machineries and trucks began plying this basically rural feeder road. What is puzzling is not the road being damaged severely – tar-sealed road now resembles war zones with two sections narrowed when the road foundation literally slides due to the weight of the trucks passing by while the gravel-section of the road between Kampong Bengoh and Kampong Danu is now a muddy road after a downpour – but how it is being left at such devastating state for so many months and with no government intervention.

There is a primary school serving the Bengoh and Danu folks while the once peaceful Bengoh village has since been overwhelmed by outsiders. Danu is physically out of sight of the dam-building area. The dam sub-contractor has their mainland China workers living in the area while their exploited Bangladeshi and Indonesian cheap labor are grouped onto site-accommodation.
The outsider is huge while the villagers are tiny indeed!

Read more here: http://hornbillunleashed.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/%e2%80%9cbig-eat-small-in-sarawak%e2%80%9d/#comment-397