Open Letter to Dato Jacob Dungau

Dato Jacob Dungau Sagan
Deputy Minister of International Trade and Industry


Level 15, Block 10,
Government Office Complex,
Jalan Duta,
50622 KUALA LUMPUR.


Dear Datuk,


Because your roots are from Ulu Telang Usan (Long Anap Baram), Antique, I know that you can identify with me and can relate to what I am saying in this letter.

Not too long ago, we tried several attempts to stop timber companies from cutting our trees and ruin our lands. It took every bit of our determination, stamina, and courage to take the matters in our own hand without your support. Now, while we are still healing from the battle scars from our encounter with blockages, we are yet again facing another bigger enemy on CM Taib Mahmud and his cronies’ plan that wants to flood the entire upper Telang Usan for the “The Baram Dam”.


If the hydro electric dam is going to materializes in the upper Telang Usan, we might as well say goodbye to our lives, our healthy existence, our dialects, our clean air, our birds and fishes, our ancestral cemeteries, our lush greenery, the quality of life that is uniquely our own. What will replace our utopia will turn mighty great lake and destruction everywhere. Then it will be too late. The die is cast, harm has been done, and there is no turning back.

Datuk Jacob, I am honest in my words, there’s no proper SIA (Social Impact Assessment) studies made on the impacts of the Baram Dam, and neither do the EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) till today and yet the planning of the Baram Dam is at its advanced stage.

However, Bakun Dam has convinced us of the devastating effects of the dams without proper SIA & EIA studies is the result what you see today at the dam site at Bakun and Sungai Asap.

So I ask, “What CM Taib Mahmud and state ministers’ jobs that will improve the economy and improving the lives of the Orang Ulu are they talking about?” How many jobs will be created, and how many Orang Ulu millionaires will be created after the completion of the Baram Dam? Is that a justifiable exchange for the massive loss of their lives and wanton destruction of their property and environment? Are human lives to be equated with a few pieces of gold or diamond? Where do justice and righteousness come in because this is a blatant disregard for a person’s right to his life and property?”

In that sugar icing speech made by CM Taib Mahmud in Miri in last December, he proclaimed has supposedly ensured his protection of our Orang Ulu economy and nominate that river reptile Datuk Alfred Jabu to tackle our problems. But that didn’t stop him from proposing to build the Baram Dam at the Orang Ulu NCR lands “protected area.” CM Taib Mahmud does not have any ownership and kinship to our lands, rivers and no feeling of belonging to it, so it doesn’t care whether our heritages and its significance to us eventually gets destroyed. But for us, it’s losing a part of what and who we are. Why must be exploitations, destruction of nature and people became poorer when every time the government brings development to the ulu?

This time, we are saying “NO” to Baram Dam and this not negotiable, Bakun is enough.

The few of us who are in favor of the dam are the misguided souls who get blinded by BN’s false gold, misleading and empty promises. But their day of reckoning will come, they will see but by that time it’s too late.

Yes, the BN government is bound to fail because their motive is not sincere – in that it is not really unity he is trying to forge in the “government projects” but merely to coax the rakyat into a false sense of belief that he they are doing something for them, when in actual fact, they are only doing something for themselves.

Datuk Jacob, you as our elected MP of the Baram, please discuss our concerns with CM Taib Mahmud to build dam elsewhere or at his backyard. We don’t want it in Telang Usan. We don’t want it anywhere in Sarawak. If you choose to remain with your deaf ears on our pledges, we will fight harder yet to stop it from building in our area because our very own races, lives, foods, heritages, cultures, cemeteries and precious lands are at great risk.

Justice is to give to every man his own. This is all we ask, and this is all we want. This is not too much to ask because we the Orang Ulu do not have much. But for what we are and for the little that we own, it’s the breadth and width of our existence. It has always been ours anyway, so how can we be wrong? How can it not be fair and just? Please let us keep our own. Let justice and righteousness prevail.

Conclusion:

Thank you for reading this is sweet and simple letter asking you to please consider reviewing all the disadvantages of having a disastrous dam relocated at Telang Usan. I for one is against this monstrous dam. The disadvantages will outweigh by hundred folds the advantages to benefit CMS, wholly owned by CM Taib Mahmud.

Datuk Jacob, until to this day, most Orang Ulu are still looking for a good and charismatic leaders to replace our former great leader who were called by the Lord. We in the 21st centuries Baramites voted for you thought we found a leader and a hero in you. But instead you actually thought you could get some direction on how to run a constituency (Baram) as big as “the State of Pahang” from the people. Both are getting lost in the process of looking at each other for clues on how to get to the quickest way to the straight path. That is some simple tips from me to you, why we are like this today. Aren’t you ashamed, we are left far behind by other Dayak communities and we are easily manipulated by small tokens for the cost of our souls?

Datuk Jacob, I hate to say this - stop squabbling over power if you failed it during your 4 terms. Becoming MP is not there for you to occupy (or be deployed to) and aggrandizes yourself. Offices in government are there to provide services for the Rakyat. If you think outrageous salaries, big German cars, first-class travel, gaining more “belian” licenses, state housing and mansion on top of hill at Ulu Tinjar are the reasons to aspire to become MP for another term while the people voted for you still earning 10 to 5 Ringgit per day from their day labor, you’re in the wrong business definitely – you should be working for CMS or Shing Yang or Samling to help them to reap off our lands.

We don’t care who the MP of Baram this time if we don’t have running water, electricity, no decent roads and no telephone connection in the Ulu.

You work for us. You should do your job, don’t imagine you ARE your job.

Although your 4th terms are almost over, our people still putting their last hopes in you. I too put my last hope in you because you are there in the Parliament.

In your next Parliamentary session, please tell the Parliament to trash the dam projects in Sarawak. Suggest to CM Taib to build it at his backyard. Not in Telang Usan. Not at someone else doorsteps.


Thank you,