Volume 12, Number 6 / December 1997
Bakun Dam Postponed but Resettlement Continues
by Patrick McCully
The swirl of rumor, assertion and denial
which has long surrounded Malaysia's Bakun Dam continues in
spite
of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed's September announcement of
the project's indefinite postponement. The 10,000 people living
in the reservoir zone continue to live under total uncertainty
as
to their future.
In early October, Malaysian energy minister Leo Moggie told reporters that the project might proceed early next year pending negotiations between the Malaysian company in charge of the dam, Ekran Berhad, and a new construction consortium including Siemens of Germany and Alcatel of France. The new group would replace the constortium led by Swedish-Swiss multinational ABB whose contract to build the dam had been terminated by Ekran. Moggie also stated that work on the diversion tunnels at the dam site was continuing.
The day after Moggie's remarks, however, Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim publicly contradicted the energy minister by stating that "we will defer what we have decided to defer". Two weeks later Ibrahim included the postponement of Bakun in his annual budget statement.
The situation was further confused on October 22 when the Malaysian press carried a story stating that ABB chief executive Gšran Lindahl accepted that the project would be delayed for one or two years, but claimed that their construction contract with Ekran was still in force.
Meanwhile, the people whose homes and lands would be flooded by Bakun Reservoir continue to suffer total uncertainty over their future. The people were originally told they would have to leave their homes in 1996, then that moving was delayed until July 1997, and then that it would not begin until this December. Despite the delay in project construction, the authorities are still claiming that resettlement is imminent, the latest date given for its start being mid-January 1998.
The most serious impact of the uncertainty over resettlement
has been a lack of food in the affected communities, as they have
not grown their usual crops believing that
they would lose their
fields. Leaders of the widely scattered indigenous communities
in the remote area to be flooded are reported to be furious at
the inadequate compensation offered for their lands
and assets
such as fruit trees as well as the fact that they will have to
pay for their new houses. Many of the affected people have refused
to accept the compensation package offered and have said
that
they will not leave their lands.
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