About 800 Orang Asli villagers living in Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak's constituency of Pekan, Pahang have been suffering from water shortages for over a month.

Shafie Dris, a coordinator with the Pahang Orang Asli Village Network told Malaysiakini that taps in the village had mysteriously gone dry.

"The villagers always face water shortages, but this is the longest it has happened. [...] The water tank lies beyond the village so they don't know what happened [...] it just suddenly stopped," Shafie said when contacted.

He said they have lodged complaints, and that water concessionaires had gone to the villages, but with no results.

Shafie said the villagers are now relying on rain and swamp water to drink, and clean with, as they fear that wells near Tasik Chini is contaminated by iron mining.

He added that if the problem is not solved soon, it may affect students at Sekolah Kebangsaan Chini, a school whose performance has improved dramatically from one of the country's worst schools 2009, to one of the best.

SK Tasik Chini is currently ranked 237 out of 7,709 schools nationwide, and had a 100 percent passing rate for UPSR examinations from 2011 to 2013.

The Orang Asli in Tasik Chini have been fighting for better water conditions for years.

In 2012, the villagers threatened not to vote for BN if the Pahang state government did not save the second largest natural freshwater lake in the country.

They had earlier that year sent a memorandum to Najib , highlighting mining and logging activities that had not only damaged the environment, but also their livelihoods.