Under a court issued eviction notice, 12 families in Kampung Boundary Lima will have to leave by April14.
The village residents' association president Santok Singh said he and two other households were facing eviction orders this Tuesday issued by the Sessions Court. Other families are expected to face similar orders later.
Under the eviction order issued on April 4, Santok and others have to give vacant possession of their properties to Bersatu Stabil Sdn Bhd, which claims right over the land.
Sandwiched between Jalan Boundary and Jalan Air Putih, the village comes under Lim's state constituency Air Putih.
Santok said he could not understand how the Sessions Court issued the eviction order to Bersatu Stabil when the villagers' suit claiming fraudulent actions to steal their land was pending in the High Court.
The case is up for hearing next month.
"It's our land, our properties.
"We want our assemblyman, the chief minister, to intervene and stop this potential travesty of justice," Santok told a press conference after an half-hour street protest the village.
According to Santok, originally the land owner sold the land to 46 families who were staying in the village back in 1960s. Out of the 46, only 36 bought the land, while 10 more bought the house.
Initially the original owner sold the land as one single plot to the villagers. But he had promised them that he would soon sub-divide the land into individual plots of land ownership.
However, the owner failed to do so, and Santok said the elder villagers being either illiterate or semi-illiterate simply trusted the lawyers and owner then.
Among the village surviving senior citizen is 98-year-old Surjan Singh, Santok's uncle.
12 families still fighting
Santok said in early 2000, the owner sold the land to Cermai Semangat Sdn Bhd, which in 2006 transferred the land title to its proxy company Bersatu Stabil.
Since then, 33 of the 46 occupants took compensation and left the village, leaving 12 families to fight for their rights. One remaining land owner could not be identified or located.
"We want the chief minister to stop the enforcement of the eviction order on April 17.
"The state government has a moral obligation to ensure that each Penang citizen prosper in development plans. We want to uphold our land rights," said Santok.
The villagers have submitted their original land ownership documents for the High Court perusal.
Ganesan slammed the system of governance for the villagers' predicament.
Drawing similarities with Kampung Buah Pala, which was commonly known as 'Tamil High Chaparral', he said land grabbing from poor, long-staying owners have become a national phenomena.
He accused developers, with the help of politicians, of robbing lands from the poor lay public by initiating legal actions to secure court orders to wrongly declare long staying residents as "squatters."
He said current system was not for justice, equity and fairness for lay public, but only favoured rich developers to continue enriching themselves in the name of development.
"The 12 families are on the verge of being robbed of their own land that they paid for, by the way justice is dispensed in our country.
"The government seems paralysed to act to equalise it," rebuked Ganesan.
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