Making life better for the Orang Asli

HAPPY National Day, Malaysia.

We turned 65 on Wednesday, and we can look back at how far we’ve come since becoming an independent nation in 1957.

As a multiracial and multicultural society, by and large the country has developed and grown, but one community that has been left out of our 65 years of progress is the Orang Asli.

Many of them are trapped in a cycle of poverty without access to education and healthcare and even the basic necessities that many of us take for granted.

For them, Merdeka holds no significance and doesn’t mean a thing.

“They remain the most backward community in the country,” said Ganesh Muren, an engineer who has spent the last seven or eight years helping Malaysia’s indigenous people.

He has just returned from the Royal Belum State Park where he was visiting an Orang Asli community of Negrito and Jahai.

They live deep in the rainforest close to the Thai border, which is inaccessible by road.

It takes Ganesh one and a half hours by boat from Tasik Banding to get to the village.

The young man is CEO of Saora Industries, a social enterprise that uplifts the lives of marginalised communities and the underprivileged through green technology.

In Belum, Saora has provided solar lighting access to 235 houses.

This may have alleviated their struggles, but education is a low priority among many parents.

The sad part is it takes the Orang Asli children two hours to get to the nearest school near Gerik.

And in school, they feel left out because they are teased and taunted.

It would be better to build a school just for the village where the children can study and mingle together instead of subjecting them to humiliation in national-type schools. The cost, though, is prohibitive.

Ganesh feels the solution is to build a centralised school specifically for the Orang Asli in every state. The various villages can then send their children to this school.

“The logistics would be challenging, for instance to get the Orang Asli kids from Belum to go back and forth to school. That’s why I am proposing a dormitory to be built within the school vicinity where the kids can stay for up to three months at a time,” he said.

Saora’s work in these remote areas is funded by organisations such as the ECM Libra Foundation and Yayasan Hasanah.

ECM Libra founder Datuk Seri Kalimullah Hassan has been working with the Orang Asli via his foundation since 2007 in areas such as Slim River, Tapah and Labu.

He concurs with Ganesh on the importance of education to help the community break out from the cycle of poverty.

“The Orang Asli have been exploited by unscrupulous politicians and rich towkay.

“Their ancestral lands have been stolen from them, they have lost their livelihoods and are being pushed deeper and deeper into the interior,” he said.

He added that the Orang Asli needed assistance and facilities, especially education infrastructure.

Mercy Malaysia former president Tan Sri Dr Jemilah Mahmood, however, cautions for the need to find a balance when dealing with our indigenous people.

“What does development mean to them? To you and me, it will be very different.

“Yes, some of them will want to come into the mainstream but for others, they will prefer to live off their land. What they need is access to their land.

“The Orang Asli is not homogeneous. We should listen to communities that want to remain close to nature,” she said.

In an interview with The Star, Sarawak-based activist Juvita Tatan Wan said accessibility to services remained a major challenge for Orang Asal communities in Borneo.

The Tuyang Initiative co-founder said this impacted on their access to healthcare and education, a further setback for the communities.

“Many teachers are not keen to relocate to these rural areas for their placement due to the high cost of transportation,” she said.

Juvita stressed that the government needed to come up with a comprehensive strategy to uplift the Orang Asal communities.

“It must not take a one-size-fits-all approach, as we may have different challenges compared to the Klang Valley folk,” she added.

Ganesh’s proposal for centralised school and community centres could just be the solution that the Orang Asli need.

“We should not only think of education for the young. We can address communities in multiple villages and empower them.

“For example, we can bring in successful Orang Asli to give talks in these schools. Using technology for better agriculture yields is one way we can create more self-sufficient Orang Asli,” he said.

A case in point is an Orang Asli village in Gerik where permaculture was introduced.

Dr Jemilah, who was involved in the project, said permaculture allowed the community to sell dragon fruits at RM12,000 per harvest for each family.

For now, though, Orang Asli communities, especially those in remote locations, continue to be left behind.

The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020 and the subsequent economic uncertainty raised concerns that their plight has worsened.

Although there are government agencies that are tasked to help them, delivery of services is often delayed because they must follow various procedures.

It is the private sector and NGOs that have stepped up and channelled aid to many of these communities.