UTAR NEW VILLAGE COMMUNITY PROJECT REPORT NAME OF NEW VILLAGE: UPRA8 乌芭 8 PERAK

Transcription

1 UTAR NEW VILLAGE COMMUNITY PROJECT REPORT NAME OF NEW VILLAGE: UPRA8 乌芭 8 PERAK Project carried out by: 1. Charmian Goh(NUS) 2. Goh Wei Leong(NUS) 3. Gwyneth Teo (NUS) DATE OF COMPLETION: JUNE 2013

2 ABSTRACT is located along the East-West highway, and is considered a major rest stop for travelers along this highway. Most of s residents are involved in rubber tapping, a labour intensive occupation with variable returns given the fluctuating market price. There are also residents who supplement their income with small business such as selling flowers from Cameron Highlands or selling fruit harvested from local orchards. Social activities and event are often held at the community hall or the Na Du Gong Temple. The Na Du Gong temple and the community hall also serve the community in a neighboring town. The community hall is frequented by non-residents for activities such judo classes and recreational badminton sessions. 1

3 A DISCUSSION OF OUTWARD MIGRATION In light of the Malaysian government s efforts to revitalize New Villages, much focus has been on how New Villages may have assets that villagers may be able to map as solutions to develop their own communities. An initial evaluation of the present needs and circumstances in Upper Perak Resettlement Area 8 () suggests that outward migration may be a concern of the residents of. When villagers were asked directly what they thought was an important concern for the village, many mentioned the rising trend for young villagers to leave the village and Gerik to work elsewhere. The villagers also suggested solutions to solve this problem; one solution that featured prominently was that of industrialisation to make use of the abundant land and forest that surround Gerik. However, the caveat is that the phenomenon of outward migration was never identified by villagers as an economic problem. While the stronger economic potential of urban financial centres - such as Ipoh, Kuala Lumpur, and even foreign cities like Singapore and Tokyo - is a definite pull-factor drawing young people away from comparatively sleepier towns such as Gerik, the villagers do not talk about how this is drawing financial activity away from the village or the town. Indeed, the villagers seem to be satisfied and content with their way of life in and Gerik. Most of s villagers are involved in rubber-tapping, a labour-intensive occupation with variable returns given the propensity for its market value to fluctuate; despite the perceived financial instability, the residents we spoke to noted the fact that the standard of living in Gerik and the village was lower than in cities, and therefore more sustainable. They also emphasised a preference for the slower and friendlier pace of life in Gerik and the village rather than the stress and alienation that characterise city living. As such, while the perceived solutions to outward migration may be economic in nature, this does not mean that the source of the perceived problem is economic. Indeed many villagers demonstrated an inherent contradiction in their opinions 2

4 about outward migration. While their solutions were economic, their concerns were more personal and familial - that their children would no longer be coming home permanently. Furthermore, their concerns about outward migration were tempered by a conviction that their children had greater potential than could be fulfilled by remaining in the village or Gerik. This was reinforced by the opinion that children could not depend on their parents all their lives but needed to be able to make decisions independently. These can be attributed to the presence of a strong awareness of cultural norms arising from their collective ethnic identity as Chinese people. For instance, various villagers - including the headman - compared what they perceived as essentially Chinese behaviour with Malay behaviour, each time emphasising perceived Chinese diligence and perseverance. It therefore seems likely that stronger push factors for outward migration may be due to inherent cultural values and expectations rather than economic reasons. Furthermore, many villagers also supplement their income with fringe economic activities such as selling flowers from Cameron Highlands or selling fruit harvested from local plantations. Given these observations, there is a lack of a pressing need for financial assistance and resource reallocation in order to lift the general community. At the same time, the social and emotional concerns about outward migration are weighed against a stoicism that sees youth migration as inevitable, leading to a sense of resignation. The assets presented in this paper are therefore latent rather than for necessary, immediate action. As such the following assets and actions are but suggestions to Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) and the National University of Singapore (NUS). 3

5 COMMUNITY ASSETS A community asset can be understood as strengths and abilities within a community that enable it to solve problems or meet the needs of its members. These assets may present themselves in different forms, such as individuals, places, natural resources and more. Having spent only 2 days in the village, the assets that have been identified are by no means exhaustive. Yet we hope that the identification of a few preliminary assets will kickstart the process of the community coming to recognise their own capacities and gifts. 1. Mr Woon Mr Woon has been the Village Headman of for the past 8 years. His past achievements attest to his competence, while his formal leadership posts lend him significant clout in mobilising resources for the and Gerik community. In his years of political office, he was crucial in laying the basic infrastructure in the village. Furthermore, as the Chairman of the MCA branch in the Gerik sub-district, he successfully paved the way for communal halls to be built in, Batu Dua and Kuala Rui. Mr Woon is also a prominent businessman with a thriving electric company in Gerik, which cements his position as a significant node in the community. His active participation in the community as a Lieutenant-Colonel of the Pasukan Sukarelawan Malaysia (Malaysia People s Volunteer Corps), the inspector of the Gerik Hospital and a Board Member of Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan (Cina) Chung Hwa, a local Chinese-medium Primary School, suggests that he will continue to contribute to the development of and Gerik. 2. Villagers with existing skill sets, networks or experience in niche areas. While a large majority of villagers depend on rubber-tapping for income, rubbertapping occurs chiefly in the wee hours of the morning and thus enables many villagers to engage in an array of fringe activities during daytime. These fringe activities represent the assortment of skills villagers possess, which may be developed in future for collective income-generation opportunities. 4

6 For instance, Mdm Pang runs a floral business on the side she boasts the townsfolk of Gerik recognise as the only one. After procuring flowers from Cameron Highlands, she sorts them into bundles for florists from other New Villages to collect from her house, before sending the rest to roadside stall owners. Since seasonal demand for flowers peaks on the 1st and 15th of the Chinese lunar month, Mdm Pang believes that she can expand her business to include other products and services such as wreaths, incense paper, and flower arrangement should she have more manpower. That a middle-aged auntie sells watermelons on behalf of her friend on her doorstep demonstrates that even the front of a villager s house can be a resource for future income-generation. The scattered fruit trees, vegetables and spices planted within are a common sight and demonstrate the villagers dexterity in crop cultivation. Their expertise could be harnessed for future use within the village, for either commercial purposes or subsistence within the village. The cataloguing of the villagers and their individual expertise at crop cultivation would allow villagers to gain an awareness of the range of crops that is capable of producing and encourage this community to recognise these skills as valuable resources to be tapped on in times of need in future. There were three eateries within frequented by villagers as well as passersby from surrounding villages. Mdm Liang, in particular, has been adding on to the variety of dishes available since she took over the breakfast stall from her mother-in-law. Her noodle stall draws a sizeable number of customers everyday, and has potential to be developed as a significant landmark in the district. 3. Social/Kinship Ties Commonly cited characteristics of, usually in contrast to cities such as Kuala Lumpur, include a strong sense of community ( 人情味 ). Some of our interviewees, who have returned from working stints in cities, reflected that city dwellers were generally more guarded and less warm toward their neighbours. Conversely, interactions amongst villagers in were described by our 5

7 interviewees to be more familiar. When prompted, our interviewees could recall activities that they usually took part in as a village, be it temple festivities or karaoke sessions at the premises of the different clan associations in Gerik. Some of the older villagers also described how they knew most of their fellow villagers in and that they felt at home in. Such strong social ties within naturally bind the villagers together as a community, thus increasing the community s capacity to deal with contingencies. The community hall and temple of also served residents of nearby villages (such as UPRA 9 and Batu Dua) as well as the main town area of Gerik. As such the community hall and temple serve as a confluence point for residents to interact with people from outside of the village. Along with the fact that individuals from the community have also worked outside of Gerik and Perak, the community thus collectively has a wider social network than they may perceive themselves as having. These may be leveraged upon when the villagers wish to come together for community projects or any other business. 4. Gerik s Geographical Location Given s proximity to Gerik, the prosperity of naturally shares a direct dependent relationship with Gerik s. As such any way to invigorate the lives of the residents is most likely to be dependent on the fortunes of Gerik. Gerik is located conveniently along the East-West Highway, which most interstate buses ply from Perak to Trengganu, cutting across Kelantan. The town is considered a major junction in the West end of the Highway and is thus a major rest stop for commuters travelling long distances along the Highway. At present there are already many hotels for commuters to spend the night in. This provides the ideal infrastructure present to the tourism capabilities of Gerik, and perhaps even establish. Gerik as a prominent destination rather than just a junction. This may be supported by the natural lush forestation that surrounds the town centre, as well as the presence of natural places of interest such as the Royal Belum State Park, Pulau Tali Kail and Lenggong Valley, each about half an hour away, making it an ideal destination for the nature-loving traveller. 6

8 The primary forests in Gerik s landscape also make it ideal for logging activity and the industrial activity associated with processing and preparing the timber for manufacturing and to be sent to other states. While this would be the most ideal solution for the issue of outward migration, it must be noted that the villagers were themselves very quick to say that industrialisation was unlikely to happen in Gerik. Indeed, Mr Woon mentioned past attempts at industrialisation that all eventually failed. Furthermore, the outward migration of youths is also precipitated by the presence of high-skilled jobs in the cities as opposed to the low-skilled work common in New Villages; Mr Woon noted that Chinese people are generally unwilling to work for less than RM20 an hour. The presence of industrial activity is thus unlikely to retain outward-bound youth given the lowskilled nature of industrial work. 7

9 SUGGESTIONS FOR ACTION BY UTAR AND NUS Given that any large-scale action that can truly aid is likely to culminate in industrialisation, we would like to propose a smaller-scale, more manageable project for UTAR and NUS. It was gleaned from interviews with the Temple Head and Village Head that there is a number of poorer people that the community aids. Once a year the Temple Committee uses the donations to the temple to put together hampers to be distributed to the poorer members of the community; this year 25 hampers were prepared. The Temple Committee also puts out a collection for more ad hoc events. For example, when one of the households suffered a loss of a family member due to a traffic accident, the Temple Committee, knowing that they would struggle with paying for the funeral, put out a collection to help the family tide through that difficult period. As such it seems that while the whole community may be doing relatively well, there may be opportunities to support the less fortunate members of the community. We thus suggest that any future community service projects in focus on these slightly more needy members of the community. 8

10 ETHNOGRAPHIC OBSERVATIONS There exists a disjunctions between the current literature and discourse on New Villages and the lived reality of the villagers of Upper Perak Resettlement Area 8 (). The discourse on New Villages inevitably includes the origins of New Villages as spaces created by the British government during the Emergency era, a fact that does not actually hold much historical value, only insofar as it is a form of theoretical categorization and minority group identification. However, the experience that we had in suggested that the village has evolved from this rather anachronistic way of perceiving New Villages. In this essay we suggest that no longer functions as a closed community like it did during the Emergency era. Instead, the physical and conceptual boundaries of the village have become more fluid over the years, and our initial conception of as an independent community bound by geography needs to be reconfigured as a more abstract set of connections defined by familial, social, religious and political networks. We also argue that New Villages are not the homogenous category the government professes them to be. Instead, this brief ethnographic exercise suggests that the reality in is a lot more complex than the convenient administrative definition of New Villages. Shifting definition of across time Boundaries The physical landscape of has changed since the 1950s. While some of the original houses from the Emergency era still stand, many of them have been torn down and replaced with gated and more modern houses. Additionally, the physical boundary of has expanded. The old area was merely two parallel rows of houses; the village now includes an additional row of houses as well as perpendicular streets leading away from the older village area. People Apart from changes in physical landscape, the composition of the villagers in has evolved dramatically over the years. Since the end of the Emergency 9

11 and the removal of the fence surrounding, residents of have regained mobility and can choose to move out of the village. Similarly, people from the town of Gerik and other areas can choose to move into. Since the end of the emergency, most villagers have moved into for conventional reasons such as marriage and retirement. There has been the occasional businessman like Village Headman Mr Woon who moved into UPRA 1 and operated in Gerik for approximately 40 years. In the 1990s, a significant number of people from UPRA 1 moved in after their village was reclaimed by the local government for redevelopment (Mr Woon included). Most recently, there have been soldiers moving into the New Villages in Gerik (, Batu Dua, Kuala Rui) as they serve their tours of duty in a nearby military camp. From our interview with a Kadazan soldier and his family who live in, we learnt that he is the only soldier in the village, as the others have since been redeployed to other regions. When prompted, he reflected that he rarely interacts with the villagers of, who are predominantly Chinese. Despite this, he expressed his desire to settle down in with his family and send his child to the local Chinese-medium primary school, in order to learn the Chinese language and communicate with his neighbours. We observed that residents generally moved out of in pursuit of better employment or housing opportunities. It was largely the young and educated who seeked better employment opportunities in the cities, while those who moved into newer housing estates in Gerik or elsewhere had amassed a requisite amount of wealth. The implications of such movement are discussed below. Daily Interactions As observed in the two days of fieldwork, with the lack of internal economic activity and with its proximity to the town of Gerik, appears to be a residential area subsumed under the town of Gerik rather than a distinct community on its own. It was observed that the residents conducted most of their daily economic activities outside of the village. Many villagers of worked in rubber plantations close by and bought provisions from markets and shops in the town area. The Na Du Gong Temple and the adjacent Community 10

12 Hall, shared by residents of and the townsfolk of Gerik, serve as a religious and social space within, and cause the boundary separating from Gerik to be more porous. The Na Du Gong Temple was originally located in four other locations around the town of Gerik before settling within s boundaries. In fact, the Na Du Gong was located at UPRA 1 before it was forced to make way for the Gerik Bus Terminal. Over the course of the next few years, the altar was moved to various locations along the river, where its precarious location prompted its followers to build a proper temple. The followership of the Na Du Gong Temple, which consists of both residents and other townsfolk of the town of Gerik, consequently influences who has a stake in the temple, and in turn shapes interests of the community hall, as it sits on land allocated for the temple. The Community Hall in question, though built within and claimed by Mr Woon as an MCA initiative for the welfare of the residents of, is frequented by nonresidents of as well, both by virtue of its location next to the temple and as a public space. Judo classes and recreational badminton are a common sight in the evenings. If the people who live in a village are understood to be the receptacles of the cultural heritage of that village, then the unrestricted, continuous movement of people in and out of suggests that there is no fixity in what constitutes an heritage. The cultural heritage of is necessarily in a continuous state of flux; as Mr Woon suggests, it is pointless to seek out a numerical census of the people in given how those numbers may change from week to week. In such conditions, it is impossible to expect a fixed conceptual boundary of UPRA to be born out of a notion of a shared heritage. There seems to be a loss of any sort of meaning attached to being from. Indeed, Mr Woon described how residents have forgotten what UPRA means, and how a government official even called to enquire what stood for and what its name would be when translated to Mandarin. The loss of definition of UPRA may perhaps serve as a metaphor for the loss of as having any sort of fixed meaning with historicity. Indeed, the significance of as a 11

13 New Village in the specific sense of its origins in the Emergency has dwindled. One key reason could be methodological - many of the people who were alive and cognisant of the circumstances leading to their relocation into New Villages are now extremely old, and many are simply no longer alive. For those who are remaining, it has been suggested by Miss Yap, an accompanying staff from Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, that memories of those hard times may also be too painful to recall. However, another reason could simply be that the physical space of has since turned into a residential area indistinguishable from spaces like Tamans. A 15-year-old teenager who regularly helps out at her mother s noodle stall, when asked if there is anything distinctive about New Villages, remarked that she considered no different from a regular Taman. 12

14 POLITICS Space We observed that the use of space was politicized in. The social activities in the village were concentrated in a central location around the temple and the community hall. Notably, the temple also hosted a eatery and an illegal gambling area, with another eatery located right across the street. These areas were where the highest concentrations of people from inside and outside the village could be found. Through the interviews that we conducted in those two days, we were informed of a particular conflict between Mr Woon, the Village Headman, and the temple committee 1 concerning the use of one of these common spaces: the community hall. Disharmony between Mr Woon and the temple committee appeared to have been caused by various factors over time but became most pronounced in the acquisition and administration of the village s community hall. The community hall in question was an inherently problematic asset because it lay within the boundaries of the area protected by the religious preservation act - which was generally considered as part of the temple s land deed and property - as well as the parameters of the village. Mr Woon claimed that the construction of the community hall was an MCA initiative for the welfare of the residents of. He also asserted that MCA s support was key to the construction of the community hall and that such a village asset should rightfully be managed by the Village Committee (JKKK) headed by himself. As such, both the JKKK and the temple committee staked what they perceived as legitimate claims over the community hall. Furthermore, while the temple committee s chairman Mr Lin perceived that it was the temple s name and perceived associations between the hall and the temple that facilitated Mr Woon s application for the community hall, Mr Woon believed that it was his political connections that enabled the successful acquisition of the community hall in as well as similar halls in Batu Dua and Kuala Rui. 1 拿督公庙理事会 ; Na Du Gong Temple Management Committee 13

15 This thorny beginning set the stage for an uneasy and fragile agreement between Mr Woon and the temple committee in the subsequent administration of the hall. The temple committee felt that the community hall should be a public space and used freely, and that users could donate to the temple s fund if they wished. Yet under the administration of the JKKK, the community hall was a privatised space where users were charged for a fee, specifically for the usage of the badminton courts. Mr Lin asserted that no one knew if the fees contributed to any sort of village fund or if they were lining the pockets of government officials such as Mr Woon. Over breakfast at the eatery across the street, Mr Woon expressly shared with us that he could most often be found at that eatery rather than the eatery in the temple, and that he did not wish to bring any business to the temple eatery. While his rationale was that the lady in charge of the temple eatery held aggressive proopposition (and therefore anti-mca) views, it became clear to us too that Mr Woon was less than likely to be welcomed at the temple eatery. In this manner the division in village leadership became physically demarcated in terms of who patronised which spaces. Thus social spaces that we had thought were common turned out to be spaces in which different nodes of power were housed. Outsiders As a result of the shifting and indistinct boundaries of, a number of nonresidents who operate in the Na Du Gong Temple and Community Hall in UPRA 8 have understandably come to perceive themselves as stakeholders of the village s religious and social space. The porosity of has thus allowed and motivated non-residents of to influence and interfere in the politics of in order to safeguard their individual interests in the spaces that they operate in. The escalation of tension between Mr Woon and temple committee on the management and usage of the Community Hall and the eventual culmination in a staged protest in late 2011 cements this idea. Mr Lin headed the demonstration against Mr Woon and his secretary, while speaking on behalf of and requesting for the replacement of Mr Woon as Village Headman. Mr Woon 14

16 opined that the temple committee felt motivated to do so because the local Chief of Police had arranged to play badminton in the community hall; the temple committee therefore felt threatened by the prospect of being discovered and fined for housing gambling activities on the temple s premises. Mr Woon did not mention anything about the charges imposed on users of the hall nor the JKKK Secretary s alleged demand for a formal letter of request for the temple s use of the hall. Nonetheless, Mr Lin contended that it was the demand for a formal letter of request that triggered a disproportionately large wave of discontent against the JKKK. Protest banners clamoured for Mr Woon and the JKKK Secretary to be stripped of their titles because of their suspicious financial transactions and lack of accountability to the villagers. Most notably, the slogans also protested the fact that Mr Woon was not born in Gerik - according to Ir Fong, to have a headman from outside of the village, let alone a stranger to the town, is quite unusual. Even the fact that Mr Woon had been in Gerik for over 40 years and has been politically active for the past 20 years did not change the fact that he was not native. Mr Tan, an assistant to Mr Lin in the organisation of the protest, claimed that all but 2 of the 80 households signed a petition requesting for the replacement of Mr Woon and the Secretary. Further, a video was taken of a sizeable crowd parading around the village with these protest banners and subsequently uploaded to YouTube. Mr Lin mentioned later on that the JKKK Secretary was his brother. Mr Lu, a member of the current JKKK committee and of the previous temple committee, told us in private that the Lin brothers shared a soured relationship and hinted that the protest was also partially instigated by supporters of opposition parties who were not residents of. The fact that Mr Lin (Chairman of the current temple committee) and Mr Liao (Treasurer of the current temple committee), who were members of the previous opposition-led JKKK, were both non-residents of lent credibility to Mr Lu s claims. Thus it seemed that the tussle over the common village space involved people who were not necessarily residents of. Indeed, the fact that the temple and community hall was utilised by both residents of as well as people from the town of Gerik presented a prime opportunity for non-residents to stake their claim on the social and religious spaces within. 15

17 DIFFERING DEFINITIONS OF Indeed, we propose that the key tensions that arose in politics within the village ensued from varying perceptions of who constituted the Community and who did not. It was common for villagers who did not live within to consider themselves as part of the community. Prominent examples include leaders of the community, such as Mr Lu and Mr Woon, who have moved out of and now live in the newer Tamans 2 in Gerik, but still perceive themselves as insiders of. It was also evident that Mr Lin and Mr Liao, who did not live in, identified themselves as a part of the ingroup by virtue of their involvement in the temple committee and felt that they had every right to request for the change of Village Headman. These are but some examples of how non-residents of considered themselves as members of the Community. Often, correspondents identified themselves with and some other community. In particular, the wives who had married villagers consider themselves as part of both the community and the community that they had moved out of. As both the Village Headman and the Chairman of the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA) Branch in Gerik, Mr Woon also expressed his allegiance to the larger Gerik community beyond just. Perhaps it is clear now that a strict definition of an villager as being only a villager born and bred in the village does not suffice. From Mr Lu s point of view, even though the temple committee was managing a temple situated within, members of the temple committee were not necessarily members of, and should not have a say in the governance of the village. Concurrently, Mr Lin and Mr Liao asserted that Mr Woon was an outsider 3 and that the village did not want to be led or represented by an outsider. These disparities in perception, when put together, demonstrate the lack of fixity in the identity of an. Yet this precise lack of fixity also suggests that any 2 花园 ; a newer estate of semi-detached housing that is considered more up-scale than kampungs and New Villages 3 外来村长 ; a outsider headman 16

18 claim to is subjective and contentious, which is reflected in the way both sides of this temple disagreement countered that the other side were made up of people who were from outside of the village. 17

19 DISCUSSION Through this ethnographic exercise, we were exposed to aspects of that were otherwise concealed by statistical approaches such as the periodic census and existing literature on New Villages. This study helped us understand that villages such as are not the isolated areas that literature and history will have us believe they are; instead, villages such as (and Batu Dua and Kuala Rui) function more as satellite villages to main towns such as Gerik. This gives us the understanding that New Villages are not the homogenous category that policy makers and academics seem to treat them as. Indeed, it is meaningless to see as merely defined by the physical and geographical boundaries of the New Village. The presence of many non-residents in the public spaces such as the community hall and the temple suggest that there are just as many - if not more - people from outside of who have a stake and an interest in the community. Indeed, it may even be that the key players and stakeholders in politics are practically non-residents of. Their claim to, then, is emotional rather than physical - some of them grew up in the village, or have relatives living there, or are simply worshippers of the Na Du Gong housed in. At the same time, this enables us to conceive of the boundaries of a village beyond their physical manifestation. Just as the term kampung may encompass a range of definitions (Thompson, 2007), may necessitate an understanding that encompasses the social and spiritual networks that end up bringing its key players to the physical locality of. 18

20 CITATIONS Unsettling Absences: Urbanism in Rural Malaysia Eric C. Thompson. National University of Singapore Press, Singapore, 2007 DISCLAIMER: Information contained in this report was compiled by the University s students on voluntary basis. Although every effort has been made to check the accuracy of the report, the University accepts no responsibility whatsoever for any errors or omissions, if any, the University reserves the right to make changes on the information at any time without prior notice. Should there be any queries regarding contents of the report, please contact: Department of Soft Skills Competency Tel: ext 8274, 8656, 8269 (Klang Valley Campus) ext 2295/2297/2299/2300 (Perak Campus) 19