PENAN children living in the two settlements for people displaced by the Murum hydroelectric dam in Belaga were last year paid RM55,000 just to attend school.

The 300 or so children, who either attend school at SK Metalun at the Metalun resettlement scheme or SK Tegulang in the resettlement with the same name, are paid RM2 a day to attend school.

“It’s an incentive for them to go to school,” Sarawak Deputy Chief Minister James Masing said today.

“Penan children don’t like to go to school,” he said.

Masing, who is chairman of the Bakun Charitable Trust – a trust that looks after the educational needs of children displaced by the state’s hydroelectric dam projects – said prior to offering the incentive, attendance was well below 40%.

When the offer was made three years ago, attendance more than doubled to between 80% and 90%, and it stayed that way since, Masing said after inking a memorandum of understanding with state power company, Sarawak Energy Bhd (SEB) for a new fund.

The incentive money came from the Belaga Penan Education Fund parked under the Trust.

“Who says we are not doing our part to help the Penans,” Masing said.

The Penans are the most backward of Sarawak’s 52 ethnic tribes, with a large majority of them still semi-nomadic with about 100 or so living like their ancestors did, moving from one place to another to forage the forest for food.

The MOU today is to widen SEB’s support for educational needs of youths in rural Sarawak by contributing to a special fund dedicated to those displaced by the state’s first hydroelectric power project in Batang Ai, Sri Aman.

The fund will be called the Batang Ai Education Fund.

Signing on behalf of the new fund is Malcolm Mussem Lamoh, the Batang Ai assemblyman who is also the assistant minister of industrial development, while SEB was represented its group chief executive officer Sharbini Suhaili.

At the signing, SEB contributed RM200,000 to kick start the Batang Ai fund while it also topped up the Belaga Penan fund with another RM200,000.

The Batang Ai allocation will be replenished yearly with the partnership to be reviewed after three years.

Children attending the one secondary school and six primary schools in Batang Ai stand to benefit from the new fund.

Sharbini said SEB is investing in the programme as education and young people are a key focus for the company.

“We are committed to developing strategic initiatives and partnerships that will help drive capability development in the state, especially in areas and communities directly affected by our project,” he said. – December 4, 2017.