Affected villagers held protest yesterday.
PENAMPANG : – A group of 20 villagers at Kampung Kolopis here are against the construction of a proposed underpass that will force them to vacant their ancestral lands, which they have been living on since they were born.
There are four families affected by the mandatory acquisition of land under Section 3 of Land Acquisition Act 1960.
The protest was staged yesterday at the proposed site which is also believed to incorporate a junction.
The affected villagers lamented that they were unable to sleep or rest after they were issued with an eviction notice to forcibly remove them from their land by the Land and Survey Department.
Spokesperson for the families concerned, Johnny Joseph, questioned the need for such an underpass which will later incorporate a huge junction that inevitably forced the acquisition of their precious lands.
“There are already four underpasses within a three kilometre stretch serving Kampung Kambazan and Tindai in Kolopis.
“What is puzzling is that the project is purportedly a request from the village’s residents for an underpass to connect Kampung Kambazan to other areas after it was cut under the new Pan Borneo WP 06 work package.
“This is not right as we the affected villagers were never consulted or informed of such proposal. The government’s authority blatantly came to us with the proposal and just shoved it into our mouths without even the audacity to consult us. We were really shocked.
“Initially, the proposal came with a certain amount of compensation but even that amount were mere paltry to the actual value of the land. It did not even include the houses that they earmarked for demolition should we decide to vacate the lands,” he said.
“We are baffled because the information we received that it was for the construction of an underpass but in actuality it was for the construction of a big junction. And to achieve this, they use Section 3 of the land ordinance to acquire the lands surrounding our houses,” he added.
To this, he asked how are the affected villagers to continue with their lives if the junction is built surrounding their houses.
He said they have the option to “unwillingly” give away the land without having to vacate their houses but then this obviously would diminish their quality of lives with the junction built right in the middle of their settlement.
He said the affected land owners were not only ill-informed but also not consulted at all about the project.
“This is the only land we have and all my four siblings are now residing here. If the lands are with the houses in it are taken away from us, we will be totally displaced.
“We will have nowhere else to go,” he said with tears on his eyes.
He said the amount of compensation that the land authorities had proposed is also hardly adequate for the land owners to purchase another piece of land let alone to build a house.
It is learnt that this project is not part of the original plan but was later included as Variation Order.
Another affected villager, Lofina Justin added another anomaly upon learning about the construction.
She said, it would not only see a part of her land being acquired for the second time but that also her land and house would now be literally drowned by this project after it was flooded persistently after the first acquisition.
“Whenever there is heavy rain, my house and land is flooded after the first acquisition but after this project is done, the flood natural disaster would be amplified several times even worse,” she said.
She said the proposal to invoke Section 3 of the land ordinance is completely unfair to the land owners as the project is not of the request of the villagers as alleged by the authorities.
The authorities should make a thorough review of the project and subsequently cancel it as it does not fulfil the criterion to invoke the mandatory acquisition, she said.
“Firstly, the underpass and junction is unnecessary because the existing access infrastructure is already adequate to cater the needs of the people and secondly, the social, cultural and economic costs are higher compared with the benefits it brings to the affected villagers.
Another villager, Doreen George, also complained that the village head turned a blind eye on them when they came to him to seek for help on their predicament.
She also raised her dissatisfaction with the Kolopis Task Force which was supposed to assist them with serious issues in the area but refused to help mediate with their problem when the matter arises.
“We were forced to help ourselves and turn to the media to highlight our ‘dire plight’,” she said and express her gratitude with Datuk Ewon Benedict for giving a ray of hope in helping them.
“We would like to thank our Member of Parliament for his promise to look into our situation.
“Hopefully, the dialogue which he suggested would be conducted soon as it is our only hope after we were rebuffed by some unconcerned parties.”
The Pan Borneo highway project in Kolopis covers a distance of 5km from the main road Penampang-Tambunan to Kg Kitobu, the boundary of Inanam district.
