Following the intervention of the Malaysian Human Rights Organisation (Suhakam) recently, the Land and Survey Department in Miri has decided to put on hold an order to demolish the houses belonging to Malay families in Kampung Haji Wahib near Canada Hill that has been earmarked for a top-end property development.

"We've been instructed to KIV (keep in view) the matter (while the grievances of the affected families are being looked into)," a senior department official said today, adding that he had no idea what would happen next.

Asked whether the department would withdraw the demolition directive, he said he could not answer the question.

A demolition party from the department's enforcement unit, accompanied by a police party, recently went to the site on a hill overlooking the soon-to-be city of Miri and pulled down two houses before work was stopped after strong protests from agitated villagers.

The land is believed to have been alienated together with other large plots of land in what is known as Canada Hill that once belonged to Sarawak Shell to Syariat Pantai Bayu Indah, a subsidiary company of timber-based conglomerate Samling Group.

Dialogue in Miri

The whole area is to be developed into a high-end property development to include hotels, apartments and shops that will cost hundreds of millions of ringgit.

Suhakam Commissioner Prof Hamdan Adnan told malaysiakini today he and Suhakam Sarawak branch administrative officer Sophian Osman were at a dialogue in Miri on April 27 where representatives of the 31 families living in Kampung Haji Wahid, Land and Survey Department officials and representatives of the company, accompanied by their lawyer, were present.

The dialogue was called after the company wrote to the villagers asking them to move out.

"Some of the families, including pensioners, said they have been offered alternative land (in Tudan) and some claimed they have not been adequately informed about what is going on," he said.

But among those who have been offered alternative sites, they claim that as they have already long withdrawn their EPF contributions and have no new sources of income now, they could not afford to build new houses.

Some also claimed they were ignorant of what the authorities had planned or whether their land had been acquired for the new development.

According to Hamdan, the government had declared the land kampung reserve a long time ago and that various generations dating back to a century had been occupying the land.

He said the houses are all connected with water and electricity and the owners have been paying assessment rates to the local council.

Hamdan said he had asked representatives of the kampung to provide Suhaham with copies of all official correspondence from the authorities and that Suhakam would write to the State Attorney-General on the matter.

Beautiful place

In the meantime, he said the department had been requested to carry out a demarcation exercise on the boundary of the land to determine which of the houses were affected and which were not affected.

Many of the affected families belong to pensioners who used to work with the police or police field force, and regard the place as their only home.

"It's on a hill overlooking Miri. It's really beautiful," Dr Hamdan said, adding that was clearly the reason the developer was very interested in the land.

"So if the houses are going to give way, then it is only right the owners should be appropriately compensated," he added.

Many of the squatter families in the Canada Hill area, including Kampung Lereng Bukit, have been re-settled in Tudan and Pujut where they have been given alternative plots of land by the authorities.

Since the 1970s the state government, as part of its policy in tackling squatter problem in urban centres, has been offering alternative land sites on the fringes and, in some cases, soft loans to put up their houses.

In some areas like Kuching City, such alternative land sites are known in the local Hokkien dialect as pek tiam teh (8 point land).