Belaga is a

district A district is a type of administrative division that in some countries is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or county, counties, several municipality, municip ...

Kapit Division Kapit Division (), formed on 2 April 1973, is one of the twelve administrative divisions in Sarawak, Malaysia. It has a total area of , and is the largest of the administrative divisions of Sarawak. Its population (year 2020 census) was 134,800 ...

Sarawak Sarawak ( , ) is a States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Malaysia. It is the largest among the 13 states, with an area almost equal to that of Peninsular Malaysia. Sarawak is located in East Malaysia in northwest Borneo, and is ...

Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...

. It is located on the upper reaches of the

Rajang River The Rajang River () is a river in Sarawak, northwestern Borneo, Malaysia. The river originates in the Iran Mountains, flows through Kapit, and then towards the South China Sea. At approximately , the river is the seventh-longest in Borneo and th ...

, some 120 kilometers northeast of

Kapit Kapit is a town and the capital of Kapit District in Kapit Division, Sarawak, Malaysia on the south bank of the Rajang River. The district comprises 15,595.6 square kilometres and as of 2020, it has a population of 65,800. Kapit is accessib ...

and slightly less than 100 kilometers from the South China Sea coast near

Bintulu Bintulu is a coastal town on the island of Borneo in the central region of Sarawak, Malaysia. Bintulu is located northeast of Kuching, northeast of Sibu, and southwest of Miri, Malaysia, Miri. With a population of 114,058 as of 2010, Bintulu ...

. It is located within the

Hulu Rajang Hulu Rajang is a federal constituency in Kapit (Bukit Mabong District, Kapit District & Belaga District) and Bintulu divisions (Tatau District & Sebauh District), Sarawak, Malaysia, that has been represented in the Dewan Rakyat since 1971. The ...

parliamentary constituency. The district population as of 2020 was 44,500 while the area of the district is 19,403.2 km². Belaga was established in the early 1900s when a few Chinese traders set up shops and started trading with the

Orang Ulu Orang Ulu ("people of the interior" in Malay) is an ethnic designation politically coined to group together roughly 27 very small but ethnically diverse tribal groups in northeastern Sarawak, Malaysia with populations ranging from less than 30 ...

, supplying essentials such as

kerosene Kerosene, or paraffin, is a combustibility, combustible hydrocarbon liquid which is derived from petroleum. It is widely used as a fuel in Aviation fuel, aviation as well as households. Its name derives from the Greek (''kērós'') meaning " ...

salt In common usage, salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl). When used in food, especially in granulated form, it is more formally called table salt. In the form of a natural crystalline mineral, salt is also known as r ...

and manufactured goods.

Region

There are many Kenyah and Kayan

longhouse A longhouse or long house is a type of long, proportionately narrow, single-room building for communal dwelling. It has been built in various parts of the world including Asia, Europe, and North America. Many were built from lumber, timber and ...

s along the Balui and Belaga rivers, and along the Rejang rivers are the

Punan Punan Bah or Punan is an ethnic group found in Sarawak, Malaysia and Kalimantan, Indonesia. The Punan Bah people are distinct and unrelated to the semi-nomadic Penan people. Their name stems from two rivers along the banks of which they have b ...

, Sekapan,

Kejaman The Kejaman people, also known as Kajaman, are an indigenous ethnic group classified under the Orang Ulu of Sarawak, Malaysia. They are part of the Kajang ethnolinguistic cluster, which also includes the Punan, Sekapan, Lahanan and Sihan sub-grou ...

and Tanjung longhouses. It is connected with

by boat known locally as express boat (4.5 hours) and recently, with tar-sealed road, and with Bintulu an 2.5 to 3 hours drive via a tar-sealed road along Bintulu-Bakun Highway, which also includes 34 kilometers of tar-sealed road (Jiwa Murni Road), which span from Mejawah to Belaga town.

Bakun Dam

To the north is

Bakun Dam The Bakun Dam () is an embankment dam located in Belaga District, Kapit Division, Sarawak, Malaysia, on the Balui River, a tributary or source of the Rajang River and some sixty kilometres east of Belaga. As part of the project, the second ...

, which is the largest dam in Asia outside of China. The dam was intended to provide

electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter possessing an electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by Maxwel ...

for Sarawak, other surrounding regions and Peninsular Malaysia, but its construction was delayed several times due to economic circumstances, in particular the

1997 Asian financial crisis The 1997 Asian financial crisis gripped much of East Asia, East and Southeast Asia during the late 1990s. The crisis began in Thailand in July 1997 before spreading to several other countries with a ripple effect, raising fears of a worldwide eco ...

. The federal government decided to continue the project, as billions of

ringgit The Malaysian ringgit (; plural: ringgit; symbol: RM; currency code: MYR; Malay name: ''Ringgit Malaysia''; formerly the Malaysian dollar) is the currency of Malaysia. Issued by the Central Bank of Malaysia, it is divided into 100 cents ( M ...

had already been spent on it. However, during the early implementation stage of the construction the plan was scaled down in order to reduce cost. Nevertheless, in January 2007, the Malaysian federal government announced its intention to reactivate the initial plan to transfer the power generated by the dam to Peninsular Malaysia via a submarine power cable. According to the official plan, the submarine cable will span a distance of 670 kilometres and reach the shore of Peninsular Malaysia at Yong Peng, at the state of Johor, southeastern part of the peninsula. Before electricity flowing through the submarine cable, it will initially flow from Bakun to the western tip of Sarawak via over head electric transmission cables traversing a distance of 700 kilometres. The additional project is expected to cost between RM9 billion and RM10 billions. It is expected to be completed the earliest by 2012, but it never reach any completion at all, before it officially cancelled by Sarawak government on 21 September 2017 after the takeover of Bakun Dam on 16 August 2017. The dam has been accused of uprooting 11,000 Orang Ulu from their traditional homes, clear-cutting hundred of square kilometers of ancient virgin

tropical rainforest Tropical rainforests are dense and warm rainforests with high rainfall typically found between 10° north and south of the Equator. They are a subset of the tropical forest biome that occurs roughly within the 28° latitudes (in the torrid zo ...

with consequent losses of hundreds of endangered plants and

endangered animal An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching, invasiv ...

s, and forever changing the natural environment of Sarawak.

References

External links

E-Belaga Website (defunct)
{{Authority control Populated places in Sarawak