Organisers have alleged attempts by outsiders to try and force many registered participants to stay away from a seminar focusing on poverty eradication and other related issues affecting the bumiputera minorities - the Dayaks in Sarawak - held during the weekend in Kuching.

At least two participants revealed there were many late-night telephone calls to stop certain participants from attending the seminar organised by the Sarawak Dayak Graduates Association (SDGA).

"If not for those calls more people would have attended this seminar," one of the participants told the seminar held on Saturday at a five-star hotel.

One participant, a retired government officer from the Lun Bawang community, was called away at the last minute by somebody in authority to attend "an urgent meeting" called by the State Secretary's Office after he was scheduled to chair one of the sessions at the seminar on Saturday morning.

The participant, Jayl Langub, an anthropologist, told malaysiakini that he was even "lectured" by that someone in authority. He was, however, not bothered at all "as I have retired from government service."

Lack of participation

State government leaders, especially Deputy Chief Minister Alfred Jabu, are suspicious of the motives of the 1000-strong SDGA which is headed by a Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) professor Dr Dimbab Ngidang, a Kapit-born Iban, in organising on Dayak issues.

They claim that SDGA is playing politics among the Dayaks by raising issues such as the lack of Dayak equity participation in the country's listed companies and poverty among the Dayaks, especially Ibans.

SDGA officials told malaysiakini such suspicions are unnecessary and claims about Dayak graduates trying to play politics through the association are all baseless.

The series of seminars organised by SDGA are in response to the federal government's call for an all-out war against poverty, especially among Malaysia's bumiputera minorities - the Dayaks in Sarawak, the Kadazandusun and Muruts in Sabah and the Orang Asli in Peninsular Malaysia, they say.

To show that they had nothing to hide, the organisers invited all Dayak ministers and government elected representatives, the officials said.

"As expected, none of the ministers turned up," they said.

However, Deputy Foreign Minister Joseph Salang, Belaga state assemblyperson Stanley Ajang and Kapit MP Alex Linggi as well as several Dayak political secretaries to the Chief Minister, including Wilfred Nissom and Robert Laing, attended.

Prof Dimbab said elected representatives should not adopt the attitude that once elected "they know everything and do not have to listen to people."

Good intentions

In closing the seminar, former Energy, Communications and Multimedia Minister and former Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS) president Leo Moggie defended the SDGA's part in being active in organising the seminars on Dayak issues.

He said because it was done with all the good intentions and for the good of the community there was no need for them to be defensive about what they were doing.

"SDGA is not political and it does not belong to any political party," he said.

The SDGA had invited Deputy State Secretary Wilson Bayo Dandut to present a paper on the socio-economic status of the Dayaks but he had declined.

The SDGA's attempt to get someone from the Economic Planning Unit of the Prime Minister's Department to give some facts and figures on the Dayak situation also failed.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) regional representative Dr Richard Leete was one of the speakers and in his global, national and local overviews on poverty revealed some startling statistics, particularly about the highest poverty rate (10. 5 per cent) prevailing among the Sarawak Iban.

The state government has undertaken its own studies, but are understandably reluctant to reveal such statistics as it could be politically sensitive or embarrassing to Dayak leaders like Jabu who until recently was the minister in charge of rural development in the state.

The Ibans who form about 30 per cent of the state's 2.5 million population are worse off than the Orang Ulu (6.8 per cent). Poverty rates among Sarawak Malays is 5.4 per cent, lower that the state's average of 5.8 per cent.

TONY THIEN is malaysiakini 's Sarawak-based stringer.