PERAI: Penang Deputy Chief Minister P Ramasamy today slammed a federal statutory body for threatening 200 residents of a small village in Perai to vacate the land or risk incurring a heavy fine of RM500,000, a five-year prison sentence, or both.
The Railway Assets Corporation (RAC) issued a six-month eviction notice to the impoverished community of Kampung Manis, who have nowhere else to call home after having settled there for several generations.
One resident, N Anjalai, said she had lived there for 78 years.
The residents are being evicted for “trespassing” and occupying RAC land.
On Aug 24, RAC had invited Ramasamy’s representative, Azrol Sani, along with several other government agents, including the Land and Mines Department director, for a site visit to Kampung Manis for the purported purpose of inspecting the living conditions of the residents there.
Ramasamy told reporters he would have never allowed the visit if RAC had had the courtesy to inform his office beforehand of its true purpose.
“We were unaware that the purpose of the visit was to evict the residents.”
Ramasamy urged RAC to sufficiently compensate Kampung Manis’ residents before evicting them and work towards a peaceful resolution.
He said since the RAC “had the gall to exploit his constituents”, it should negotiate with him face to face.
“There has been no consultation at all on the matter. Not even a single dialogue.
“Although the land in Kampung Manis is RAC’s property, it does not have the right to evict the residents against their will without providing alternative housing or sufficient compensation.”
Housewife M Letchumie, 25, who is also a third generation resident of Kampung Manis, told FMT her husband signed the eviction agreement believing these were documents for the ongoing nationwide census.
“They only showed us the eviction notice after getting us to sign the documents.”
She told FMT that she and her family of 12 had lived there all their lives and had nowhere else to go.
“This is all we have,” she said. “We don’t have enough to afford another house.”
A single mother of two, Sutami Kaslan, 50, said she was not even aware of the eviction until a friend told her over the phone.
“All I want is a roof over our heads for my two children. If they evict us now, where will we go?”
She said she earned an income of RM20 to RM30 a day as a roadside food vendor and had ran out of options to face the future.
Ramasamy vowed that so long as he remained Perai assemblyman, he would not let RCA have its authoritarian way with his constituents.