Better governance pledge under Pakatan ‘no fairy tale’
By Dominic Legeh, Free Malaysia Today
KOTA KINABALU: The future of the Orang Asli community in Selangor is much brighter now after Pakatan Rakyat took over the state.
State exco Elizabeth Wong said that under the Pakatan-led Selangor government, piped water, electricity as well as land security for the much-exploited Orang Asli community are being given priority.
Wong took a swipe at the previous Barisan Nasional (BN) state government for marginalising the Orang Asli in Selangor and elsewhere for over 50 years.
She said that within just three-and-a-half years of Pakatan rule, the Selangor government has managed to begin gazetting five areas as Orang Asli reserves and was now finding ways to give them back lands grabbed from them for development.
Wong also thanked Sabah-based Pacos Trust (Pacos) for its contribution to the Selangor
government in its efforts to raise the living condition of Orang Asli community in the state.
She said Pacos has helped the state government train Orang Asli youths in Selangor to conduct surveys to map their reserves using the Global Positioning System.
Pacos is a community-based voluntary organisation that helps to raise the quality of life of indigenous communities.
“Pacos came to Selangor to help us in the effort,” she said at a forum on “Land and Customary Land – Law, Policy and Challenges” organised by Sabah PKR here recently.
She praised Pacos for also helping the Selangor government provide mini-hydro-electricity supply to the Orang Asli villages.
She said these were among the various initiatives undertaken by the state government to enable the Orang Asli to share the fruits of development.
Wong, the Selangor State Tourism, Consumer Affairs and Environment Committee chairman and Lanjan (PKR) assemblywoman, said a few weeks after Pakatan won Selangor in the March 2008 general election, they held a meeting to discuss the case of Sagong Tasi, the landmark Orang Asli customary land case.
Violation of rights
When Pakatan took over the state government, the case had gone to the Federal Court for a re-appeal by the previous the BN-led state government, after losing twice before that.
Wong said the case involved land belonging to the Orang Asli in Selangor which had been taken away to make way for the construction of a highway to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
Recounting the villagers’ ordeal, she said their village, Kampung Orang Asli Bukit Tampoi, was situated in the middle of the proposed road and the villagers had been given a 14-day eviction notice without any promise of compensation.
The BN-led government mobilised the police, Rela, and Federal Reserve Unit personnel to clear the area, including the fruit trees as well as houses built by the Orang Asli, she said.
“The affected Orang Asli took their case to the High Court in 1997. No one expected them to win but they won,” she said.
Then, she said, the BN government fought back by submitting an appeal to the Appeals Court in 2005 and the Orang Asli won again.
“The BN-led government then submitted an appeal to the Federal Court.
“But because Pakatan captured Selangor, a few weeks later we held a meeting and decided to make a stand by postponing the government’s case at the Federal Court,” she said.
“We wanted to study the case where the rights of Orang Asli appeared to have been violated and we wanted to go through all the data.
“Later, we informed the Federal Court that the Selangor government did not want to continue with the case and so it collapsed,” Wong said.
She said the federal government-appointed highway developer was then forced to pay compensation to the affected Orang Asli.
“The money may be small but what is important is that we forced the federal government to recognise the Orang Asli rights,” she said.
No BN move to gazette land
Howver, Wong said that improving the living conditions of the Orang Asli was not easy as there were still a lot of obstacles.
“Many Orang Asli lands in Selangor have been given to developers and some of them have been developed into residential areas,” she said.
“For example my constituency, Bukit Lanjan, was originally an Orang Asli village but is now like a city and there are no more Orang Asli villages.
“This happened about 20 years ago and there is no way we can reverse it. But there are several other cases where the developers have yet to start work and it is these that we are now striving to solve,” she said.
She said another obstacle was the Orang Asli Affairs Department which has now been changed to the Orang Asli Development Department.
The department, she said, has everything including the map showing where the Orang Asli land areas were, but did nothing to have these lands gazetted as Orang Asli villages by the state government.
Wong said the Orang Asli Action Body set up by the state government was looking into Orang Asli land-related cases and was now mapping all the Orang Asli villges in Selangor.
“It’s not an easy task as it requires a lot of ground work and we have managed to complete the mapping for four Orang Asli villages and they will be gazetted as such,” she said.
