Are loggers in Sungkai, Perak, meeting and fulfilling standards and conditions required by their licence and stipulated by the Malaysian Timber Certification Council (MTCC)?

If not, buyers in foreign countries convinced that the timber logged from the area is coming from sustainably managed forests are being duped, as assertions by residents of four villages in Kampung Rancangan Pengumpulan Semula in Jernang (RPS Jernang) seem to suggest.

This was among the questions raised by the Center for Orang Asli Concerns director Colin Nicholas recently when commenting on allegations by 330 residents of four Semai villages that logging operations on their ancestral land has harmed the environment and depleted their sources of livelihood.

The villagers also alleged that their religious and cultural beliefs have been trampled on by loggers who have not spared their sacred sites such as "graves and holy rocks"

According to documents acquired by malaysiakini, the licence held by the contractor to extract logs from 27ha of Jernang's Bukit Slim required the licensee to fulfill the "Criteria, Indicators and Activities for Sustainable Forest Management" as specified by MTCC.

A check on MTCC's website revealed that under Principle #3 (Indigenous People's Rights) of the council's Criteria and Indicators for Forest Management Certification, timber extraction activities "shall not threaten or diminish, either directly or indirectly, the resources or tenure rights of indigenous people. "

Under Principle #6 (Environmental Impact), furthermore, forest authorities are urged to "conserve biological diversity and its associated values, water resources, soils and unique and fragile ecosystems and landscapes, and, by so doing, maintain the ecological functions and the integrity of the forest."

Elsewhere, MTCC stipulates that "sites of cultural, ecological, economic, or religious significance to indigenous people shall be clearly identified with the cooperation of such peoples and clearly recognised and protected..."

Not complied with

Commenting on the apparent disparities between the requirements of MTCC and the actual realities on the ground, Nicholas said it was "obvious that the requirements are not being complied with and the supervising or overseeing of the logging process is not being done."

"If the loggers have been licensed (by the state forestry department) to carry out their logging operations, then why are so many people protesting against it? The fact that people are getting sick from a river polluted by the logging exercise is reason enough to stop it," he said when contacted.

If river water and other forest resources could not be accessed for their own sustenance, as the villagers claim, it also indicated that "the supervising and oversight over the logging operations was not being done" by the state forestry department, said Nicholas.

Nicholas also added that the law in Malaysia as set out in the Aboriginal Peoples' Act (1954) also guaranteed Orang Asli communities' right to their own resources.

The villagers had on Nov 12 lodged a police report on the matter highlighting their plight, stating that their intention to continue blocking the entry of logging workers into their ancestral land "as long as the party involved in this issue does not give a response in black and white (to our grievances)."

"We request your cooperation in monitoring the activities of the loggers as one way of preventing any untoward incidents, such as a clash, from occuring should the loggers remain adamant in entering our ancestral land despite being forbidden from doing so," they told the police chief of Sungkai district.

One village leader, Mat Epen Yonsenggang, said the villagers were forced to take such measures because letters sent to several federal and state agencies had not produced any efforts to protect their interests.