NEWS and photos of an Orang Asli community making ends meet by scavenging for recyclables at a landfill in Muadzam Shah, Pahang, shook the public two years ago.

It prompted questions about the treatment of the country’s indigenous peoples and the role of the Orang Asli Development Department (Jakoa) tasked with protecting their welfare.

After a public outcry over the hazards and unhygienic conditions the Jakun tribe had to face in order to earn a living, the authorities reacted by closing the landfill to public access.

Now, two years on and through a pandemic, the community is left without sustainable income. The landfill had been an important source of their livelihood, apart from meagre earnings from selling forest produce.

Orang Asli who used to work at the landfill told The Malaysian Insight that they used to earn up to RM500 or RM600 a month from scavenging.

“I worked at the landfill for almost 16 years, collecting various things to sell, and I had a sustainable income. After that episode, my source of income has since been disrupted,” said a 32-year-old Orang Asli woman named Koi from Kg Bukit Biru 2, a village five minutes away from the landfill.

“People said we were working in unsanitary conditions, as if we ourselves did not know that. 

“Of course, we knew, and hence, when we returned home, we cleaned ourselves thoroughly. I worked there for so long and I never contracted any sickness from it,” she said.

Koi said the landfill is now off limits except to garbage disposal contractors. The landfill owner, however, has issued entry passes to a limited number of Orang Asli but most of them prefer to stay away after the public attention.

Some, however, still do try to scavenge there but are sometimes chased away by security guards despite the entry passes issued.

Koi said the Orang Asli have been trying to earn some money from doing odd jobs and chopping Bertam trees for sale.

However, the number of trees are dwindling, which means they are not a sustainable source of income.

“Right now, I don’t have a job. Sometimes, when there is a demand from a tauke (businessman) for Bertam wood, I try to do that, but chopping trees is a lot of work and is tiring.

“Also, Bertam trees are only good if it is the dry season. Rains spoil the wood and we cannot sell it,” she added.

In mid-February of 2020, freelance journalist and photographer SC Shekar reported that an Orang Asli community in Bandar Muadzam Shah were scavenging at a landfill to make ends meet.

They included families with children as young as two years old.

Shekar noted the injustice the Orang Asli faced at being forced to do a dangerous job to make ends meet after losing the forest – their source of clean water, food and livelihoods – to logging and mining.

News reports, noted hazards at the landfill such as broken glass, chemicals and syringes in searching for items that could be recycled.

Orang Asli children also played in the landfill and their homes were near this unsanitary site.

The news gained the attention of the Pakatan Harapan government as well public figures including the Pahang royal family. It also saw pressure from the public to shut the landfill down.

The minister then who oversaw Orang Asli affairs was P Waythamoorthy, who proposed several measures to help the community, which included solar power supply, clean water as well as a fertigation or fish farming project to provide them with income.

However, none of these proposals ever materialised. The PH government was ousted just two weeks after Shekar’s report and photographs were published.

“I did try to follow up with Jakoa on the things that the minister promised but to date there is nothing, so we end up having to rely on ourselves to find jobs or farm whatever we can to make ends meet,” said Pak Jemidah, a former worker at the landfill, 48, who lives in Kg Bukit Biru 1.

“Ever since the villagers here have been barred from entering, it has been difficult to find other jobs that can give us the amount of money as the landfill did.

“My livelihood has been severely affected since its closure. Gathering forest produce certainly does not give me the same income compared to collecting at the landfill,” he added.

He recently spent two weeks searching for suitable Bertam trees and after managing to harvest two bunches of its sticks, he could only sell them for RM50. He said this was nothing compared to the RM400 he would get from collecting discarded plastic bottles and steel at the landfill.

“The walk to the landfill would take less than 10 to 15 minutes, but it takes me around one to two hours to go into the forest where I can find Bertam trees,” he added.

Pak Jemidah said most of their food source now is the cassava that they plant around their homes.

His neighbour, Aminah, 31, also shed some light on how the community was divided over bringing children to work at the landfill.

Aminah said she understood why the landfill was closed off due to the hazards it posed, especially to children, and said she personally disagreed with bringing kids to the site.

“Some of us also did not agree with bringing children there, but others do. What can we do? Some (among us) even decided to live on the landfill itself, and that caused problems for us, too,” she said.

“Now, if we want to go in, we have to try to do it without being noticed.”

After the story came to light, Pahang Solid Waste and Public Cleansing Management Corporation (SWCorp) closed the landfill to the public, allowing only company-designated operators and lorries to enter the site.

MCA deputy president Mah Hang Soon urged the authorities to ensure that the Orang Asli there had alternative sources of income following the landfill’s restricted access.

There are currently 217,000 Orang Asli people in Malaysia, with most of them situated in Perak and Pahang.

More than one-third of them live in hardcore poverty with many of their villages lacking basic amenities such as roads, sanitation, and clean running water. – January 22, 2022.