Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) believes that the 43 railway land squatter families at Kampung KTM in Sungai Siput, Perak are being short changed by the land office by not allocating all the six acres of land in Taman Kledang for their relocation.

PSM Sungai Siput MP Dr Jeyakumar told Malaysiakini today that former BN Menteri Besar Tajol Rosli had approved in principle to the while former Pakatan Mentri Besar Mohamad Nizar during his tenure had also directed the land office to assign the land to the people.

psm declare asset 120309 jeyakumar Jeyakumar (right) stated that the state land and mineral department director Abu Zar Omar in a letter dated Sept 17, 2007 had ordered the Kuala Kangsar district land office to allocate the six acre land in Taman Kledang for the Kampung KTM squatters.

A copy of the state land directive and a copy of the six acre approval plan by state land and mineral department were made available to Malaysiakini .

Also in April 2008, the former Sungai Siput Assistant District Officer (ADO) Mat Dan had confirmed the state land office directive for the resettlement of the 43 squatter families.

However, there was an about-turn in the relocation of the squatters when the new ADO Azrul Sani Ibrahim took over in Sungai Siput.

Azrul had told the squatters that only 20 of the squatter families will be allocated lots in Taman Kledang while the remaining families have to move to an area near Kampung Perik which is a swampy low lying land and is flood prone.

"There is something fishy going on...extremely fishy at the district level... why is the land office now singing a different tune after we had obtained the approval from Tajol, Nizar and Mat Dan? Is the balance of land earmarked for another building project?" Jeyakumar allegedly questioned.

To this allegation, Azrul denied the allegation and assured Malaysiakini that the whole area is reserved for squatters only and there is no plan to divert the land to others for other housing projects.

Does not tally logically

When asked about Mat Dan's statement that all of the 43 families can be relocated to Taman Kledang, Azrul said "That is only a proposal and when we took the actual measurements on the ground we found that there are only 35 lots left after deducting the reserve land for the passage of TNB's overhead high tension electrical cables. Each lot is a measurement of 40 X 80 ft land for each squatter."

Jeyakumar appeared shocked at Azrul's statement and said "it was not logical as our private surveyor had allocated out of the six acres of land, two acres for the TNB reserve land and had divided the balance by allocating a 50 x 80ft land lot for each of the 43 squatter families in Taman Kledang."

"If what Azrul said is true, than according to his measurements we have more land lots for say at least 50 squatter families, so why the discrepancies in dividing the 43 families into two groups and allocating only 20 families for Taman Kledang?' he asked.

ktm land sungai siput perak protest 070709 09 "There is something wrong in the land office's calculations which do not tally with our surveyor's figures," he added.

On June 3, the land office had given a two-week eviction notice for the 43 squatter families in Kampung KTM who had been living on railway land for the past 30 years.

The affected squatters consisting of 26 Indian families, 12 Chinese and five Malay are very poor and are odd-job wage earners.

They do not have the financial means to raise the low lying swampy area to the present 12 ft in height of Kampung Perik.

Today, about 100 kampung KTM squatters led by Jeyakumar, DAP and Hindraf members staged a two-km protest walk through the Sungai Siput town to hand a memorandum to ADO Azrul

The memorandum demanded the ADO to withdraw the two week eviction notice which ends on July 17 and to come for a discussion to find a solution to the problem.

The police had closed the land office gates for security reasons and refused to let the protesters in and there was a ten-minute stand off before police allowed about five representatives to enter the land office premises to hand over the memorandum to Azrul.