Rebuilding the Seria Oil Fields in Brunei by Serdevi Menon
There was a time when the Dayaks(Menon spelling) went to work in the oil fields. This was usually the time between the planting and harvesting of the rice crop. It could also have been the time when a young man left his longhouse to seek his fortune to provide for a bride. Wages from the oil company would have been astronomical compared to what could be earned by selling fruit or other jungle produce. Returning home to plant or harvest the crop, the Dayak could be flush with money compared to what he had before. This essay shows the point of view of the colonial masters who ruled the oil.
While searching for records of the Indian workers rebuilding the oil fields bombed by the British and the Japanese, the author, Serdevi Menon, found two ledgers documenting the Dayak contribution.
This article tells the labour history of the Northwest Borneo oilfields. In 2018, Brunei Shell Petroleum (BSP) in an unprecedented move, released to Brunei’s national archive two labour registers of the British Malayan Petroleum Company with entries dating between the 1940s and 1950s.
These registers provided a rare glimpse of the workers recruited to the Brunei oilfields as labourers, a category distinct from staff. As BMPC labour they worked to rehabilitate the company town and the oilfields that were destroyed during the Second World War by the Japanese army and allied bombing in the British protectorate of Brunei.
Each entry in BMPC’s ledger meticulously noted the date of engagement, place of employment, wages, work history, as well as some biographical information about its workers. Often obscured in historical records, the registers made visible how Indigenous workers negotiated and resisted the company’s control of its labour force.
Brunei, a British protectorate between 1906 and 1984, is sandwiched between North Borneo (now Sabah) and Sarawak. North Borneo was administered by the North Borneo Chartered Company from 1881 and became a British protectorate in 1888.
Sarawak, which had been the Brooke Rajahs’ fiefdom between 1841 and 1946, became the Crown Colony of Sarawak administered by Britain in 1946. Labuan, an island off the northwest coast of Borneo, was ceded by Brunei to Britain in 1846 and became a Crown Colony in 1848. After the Second World War, except for the interim period September 1945–July 1946, when first the British Borneo Civil Affairs Unit (BBCAU) and then the British Military Administration (BMA) were in charge of these states, North Borneo and Labuan were administered as the “Crown Colony of North Borneo” and remained under British control until 1963, when they were incorporated, along with Sarawak, into the federated states of Malaysia.
Beginning in the early 1880’s the Dayak have been used as wage labourers in the tobacco and oil exploration industries. Their background in tree felling and land clearing made them suitable for such tasks. They often left their longhouses between harvest and planting seasons making them an unreliable source of labour.
During the war these territories—including the rest of Borneo that was under the jurisdiction of the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesian Kalimantan)—were occupied by the Japanese between December 1941 and September 1945.
In December of 1945, the oil company reported to the colonial office: “We have been able to carry out a considerable amount of rehabilitation work on the Seria Field and at the Refinery and Sea loading lines at Lutong in the adjoining state of Sarawak.”
By 1946, “Subject to the arrival of key material, which is expected shortly, we anticipate that we shall be able to commence production from the Seria Field, and ship crude from Lutong, at an initial rate of some 40,000 tons a month”. “By 1948, 120 productive wells had been opened and actual output . . . [was] well above pre-war levels.”
Book Two
Book 2 consisted of entries for 605 “badge numbers” of labourers recruited in 1945. Book 2 listed a variety of jobs that were assigned in 1945 to Dayaks, Malays, Chinese, Javanese, Indians, and Eurasians. Dayaks were most often labourers or watchmen assigned to various sites in the oilfields and towns. Labour force employees worked a range of jobs including telephone operator, cook, wireman, mosquito catcher, syce, fireman, driller, and rigger.
Book 2 listed a variety of jobs that were assigned in 1945 to Dayaks, Malays, Chinese, Javanese, Indians, and Eurasians. Dayaks were most often labourers or watchmen assigned to various sites in the oilfields and towns. Labour force employees worked a range of jobs including telephone operator, cook, wireman, mosquito catcher, syce(a person who looks after horses), fireman, driller, and rigger.
The chronicling of each worker’s employment in Book 2 revealed long years of employment. Remarkably, an eighteen-year-old Chinese labourer employed in the “Labourer Ration Store” in 1945, despite having his ration allowance (RA) and good conduct (GC) bonus cut for two months for “unauthorized interference with office property during leisure hours,” was promoted to SAS in May 1949, an unprecedentedly rapid advance. His file showed that he was sent to be trained in the machine shop for three years as a draughtsman.
Some men were discharged for taking leave without permission and a Malay worker was discharged on medical grounds after contracting tuberculosis. Similarly, an Indian derrick man was discharged with “one month’s wages instead of notice” for being “medically unfit.” A Dayak was dismissed for “sleeping on the job” while a Malay was dismissed for “disobedience and suspected misuse” of company petrol.
After a period of working in the Belait area, some workers were transferred to SOL’s Miri oilfield or the Lutong refinery. From the entry of one Chinese labourer who joined the company in 1945 and left a year later to take up a contract job, it was evident that labour contractors were hiring from the region either for BMPC contract work or the government’s public works.
Intriguingly, a Javanese labourer who was hired by the company in November 1945 was repatriated to Java two months later, for unknown reasons. Other entries also noted where a discharged worker was headed. For instance, a Dayak “left to Labuan en-route to Sibu” in Sarawak while an Indian left “without knowledge of the Company for Miri.” Another Chinese worker who left the company had the monthly twenty dollars of his wages allotted to his wife in Miri terminated. No reasons were given for this financial arrangement or whether this was a common practice.
An entry for a Malay wireman who “absconded from [Kuala Belait] Hospital” also raised interesting questions. A Malay wireman was listed as having died in the hospital but no reasons for his death were provided. However, a Dayak who died in service was listed as having “died due to natural causes.” Offences that led to cuts in their RA and GC bonuses included “stopping for work before time,” “incurring an accident whilst driving a truck,” losing one’s “number disc,” and “using Company’s truck [for] illegal business.” A Malay syce in the garage and transport department had several infractions revealing a spirited irreverence about company rules. His RA and GC bonuses were cut several times including for losing his number disc, “driving along the backroad . . . at a speed of 79 kilometres/hr” and for “forcing his way into Kranie’s seats at the cinema.” BMPC’s Marina Theatre at the time showed Malay, Chinese, and Indian films and was segregated according to worker grades. The term Kranie referred to clerks and the seats therefore presumably pertained to the space reserved for regional staff.
Book 18
Unlike Book 2, Book 18 documented workers’ places of birth. Of the 385 entries examined in Book 18, 117 are those of Dayaks. None of these Dayaks’ places of birth were recorded as being Brunei, although forty-seven Dayaks had their places of birth unmarked.
The Colonial Report’s figures for Dayak arrivals and departures to Brunei therefore pointed to Dayak mobility across borders. Of the 117 Dayaks listed, seventy-seven were from Sarawak. Of these, fifty-eight Dayaks, the largest group, were from Sibu, Sarawak’s Third Division 407 km Southeast of Seria; fourteen were from Simanggang (now Sri Aman) in the Second District, 495 km Southeast of Seria, and the historically densest population of Dayaks in Sarawak; and three were from Sarawak’s capital city Kuching in the First Division and 865 km to Seria. Forty-two Dayaks had no place listed for their birthplace. Some of them could have been local Brunei Dayaks, but considering the immigration figures for 1949, it was most likely that these Dayaks too came from Sarawak, a few possibly even from North Borneo.
Dayaks engaged by BMPC during this period were mostly unskilled labourers. Ninety-two Dayaks listed in Book 18 were hired as Grade-1 labourers who made $1.50 per diem. Most Dayaks were concentrated in the geological department, either in the mid-Baram or the Teraja region, indicating that they were probably tasked with forest clearing for roads and pathways or hired to facilitate geological survey operations.
The departments that required workers for labour-intensive jobs appeared to have hired in clusters. For instance, twenty Dayaks were hired on February 26, 1949, by the geological department’s mid-Baram division. This group was “paid off by the Seismic party 1” on April 27, 1949, when presumably the field mission’s objective was completed. These men were then discharged from the company on May 3, 1949.
Interestingly, all these Dayak workers hired in the geological department had their places of birth unmarked in their company records. However, many of these Dayaks previously worked in SOL’s Miri oilfield as evidenced by their Miri employment badge numbers entered in BMPC’s Book 18. Thus, it was reasonable to assume that these Dayaks had travelled together across the border to Seria. It also indicated that BMPC might have transferred them from Miri to meet their work exigencies.
Dayak workers employed by BMPC ranged in age from a fifteen-year-old from Sibu employed as a Grade-1 labourer and assigned to Wimpey at $1.50 pd. to a forty-seven-year-old Dayak employed as a line assistant in the Dayak Company Line for $36 per month. There were two sixteen and two seventeen-year-old Dayaks as well as three eighteen- and three nineteen-year-old Dayaks employed as stackers(loaders) in the materials department. Seventy-three Dayak workers were in their twenties, thirty-one were in their thirties, and seven Dayaks were in their forties. Age was not a criterion for any of the jobs or the wages they received. A forty-year-old Dayak from Kuching was paid $1.50 pd. as a trainee ganger(supervisor of labourers) in the production department; a twenty-two-year-old Dayak was paid $1.70 pd. as a constable in the labour department; and a sixteen-year-old Dayak—who had worked in the Miri oilfield previously as his Miri number was logged—was paid $1.00 pd. as a Grade-0 opas (peon) in the geological department. (levels in the oil company and wages ranging from $1.50—$5.10 a day).
Book 18 recorded daily wages ranging from $1.00 pd. for the 16-year-old opas to $2.55 for a Grade-3 labourer in construction. Monthly wages were assigned to line or training assistants and ranged from $39 to $54 for a Grade-2 cook. A couple of Dayak cooks were paid a weekly wage of $17.40. Of the 117 Dayaks in Book 18, eighty-five were listed as being single and thirty-two married, some with children. Except for three Dayak workers, the rest were living in Dayak company accommodations.
Dayak workers occasionally were moved to different sites within the Belait district. Two Dayak constables hired in March 1949 were transferred to Kuala Belait in May of the same year only to be brought back to Seria in December. Others were regraded and moved to a different site as in the case of a Dayak line assistant who was promoted as a Grade-2 cook and sent to field engineering, the “Eastern District.” None of the Dayaks had worked with labour contractors. Some Dayaks had “Ex-Sibu’” noted on their files. Whether this referred to a particular site of work in Sibu and if so, which one, was indeterminate. Labor turnover was high during this period and Dayaks who came to Brunei did so for short periods to supplement their income. Indeed, the Annual Report of Brunei for 1949 bemoaned:
The mental make-up of the local races who have not yet lost, as so many Europeans seem to have done, the ability to enjoy leisure. Money is still a secondary consideration to them and work for cash wages only when they require money for some particular purpose. When they have saved what they think they need, for a buffalo or a wife or what may be, they are quite likely to pack up and go off to their kampongs without telling anyone and often without collecting wages they have worked for.
Dayak’s survival did not depend on their work in the oilfields and this is reflected in their employment records.
Most of the Dayaks listed in Book 18 left the company’s service apparently “of their own accord” after a few months or a year of service. BMPC required its employees to provide notice of their departure but whether most Dayaks did so is unclear. However, Book 18 detailed a Dayak who refused “to go back to work out his month’s notice” and another who within two months of being hired “refused to return to work and wishes to return home as soon as possible.” “Continual absence without permission” was grounds for discharge but whether those who were charged, although it was duly noted in their logs, were fired or simply left could not be determined.
Other reasons for Dayak workers being discharged pertained to their conduct. Two labourers in Wimpey(?) were hired and fired the same day since they both “refused to work.” “Overstaying leave” was also grounds for discharge. A Dayak constable was “instantly dismissed for failure to check buildings under his care.” Another was dismissed because his work was deemed unsatisfactory.
Book 18 also documented an unusual case of a Dayak labourer in the section of the road, a month-and-a-half after he was hired, being deported to Sarawak by the Brunei government for unknown reasons. Book 18 also revealed a pattern of Dayaks leaving their employment as a group. For instance, at least seven Dayaks in the geological department left “of their own accord” on June 26, 1949; similarly, a month later nine Dayaks working in the Wimpey(?) section left “of their own accord.” Some Dayaks who had been let go by Seismic Party 1(?) appeared to have been rehired shortly thereafter, possibly for another job assigned to the Seismic Party.
Dayaks employed by BMPC were free laborers and their records indicated their sense of independence and free will. Most left when they wanted to, often apparently with no sense of obligation to the oil company. The company was cognizant of its dependence on Dayak labour and the need for a stable labour force. The Annual Report states, “There was some trouble with the Sibu Dayaks as a result of which sixty-four Dayaks returned home.
Book 18 accounted for the departure of several groups of Sibu Dayaks, possibly of some of those mentioned in the Annual Report. Dayak’s agency and resistance to the company’s control were thus documented in these entries and raised the question, embedded in the notations, whether Dayak’s “leaving of their own accord”.
In the account of the Sibu Dayaks, the Annual Report hinted at the company refusing to concede to some demands made by the Dayaks and that the Dayaks chose to walk away, rather than meet the company on its terms: “The matter was fully investigated and steps taken to improve liaison to prevent misunderstandings. Arrangements were also made for the Dayaks to build their own long houses, at the company’s expense.
In 1949, BMPC provided its employees with “a cost of living allowance of 20 per cent of wages for single men and 50 per cent for married men was paid and an increased regular attendance and good conduct bonus of $5 a month plus two days basic pay. The marital status of workers, and the number and ages of children, were meticulously documented in the labour register books. One entry even noted a worker “accompanying his insane wife home.”
In the section under “Fines,” employee infractions that were reprimanded by cuts in their RA and/or the GC bonuses were detailed. Remarkably, except for a Dayak in construction who had his bonus cut by fifty cents for “failing to draw rations on Sunday and wasting time on Monday,” no other infractions by Dayaks were documented in Book 18. As reported in the 1949 Annual Report, “Daily hours of work for men were 7 3/4 hours and work was originally for six days of the week with the aim of a five and a half day week, which was later to be achieved.”
By the end of 1949, BMPC had revived its oil wells and expanded production. Basic infrastructure projects were completed and extensive oil-town development projects were initiated. The building of housing for its employees was accelerated and projects to provide welfare amenities for BMPC labor and staff progressed steadily.
Dayak labour was vital to these infrastructure projects since they provided the unskilled labour required in construction, road building, and geological surveys for oil exploration. Book 18 conclusively made visible the crucial role of Dayaks in the oil industry in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.
Book 18 also provided a glimpse of the work, lives, and personalities of other workers in Seria. Apart from the 117 Dayaks logged in Book 18, 267 workers of 7 distinct ethnic groups were listed (Table 4). There were 122 Malays, the largest group of workers, 108 Chinese, 14 Indians, 9 Chinese Dusun, 4 Javanese, 4 Eurasians, and 1 Ceylonese.
These workers recorded their places of birth as being variously in Brunei, Sarawak, North Borneo, Singapore, Malaya, Labuan, China, Java, India, and Ceylon. Book 18 listed only one female, a forty-year-old Chinese amah [maid/nanny] who worked for only ten days—leaving of her “own accord”—at the Kuala Belait hospital for forty-one dollars per month (Grade 2). She was born in China, lived in the Kuala Belait kampong (village, most probably in the Chinese section), and had previously been a “planter.”
However, another number was noted next to her badge number, indicating that she had at some point worked for the company previously. She was listed as being “single.” Several workers’ prior occupations were recorded as “planter” and it was uncertain whether it represented work in an estate or smallholding farms. Evidence of the ethnic segmentation of BMPC’s labour force was seen in the distinction made between skilled and unskilled labour.
Dayaks dominated the workforce in the geological department—only one Chinese was listed in geological. Skilled jobs were dominated by Chinese and Indian labourers. Of the fourteen Indians listed in Book 18, only one was a Grade-1 labourer. The others were Grade 3–Grade 6 and included enginemen, riggers, floor men, a carpenter, a crane driver, and two office assistants. One of these men was previously listed as being a planter while nine Indians had been contract laborers. Curiously, only Indians had their religious identities entered under their “nationality,” a category for all purposes that denoted race/ethnicity. Thus, “Indian Mohammedan,” “Indian Christian,” and “Indian Hindu” were distinct identities.
The low number of Indians listed in Book 18 and the evidence from the Annual Report that “South Indians constitute many of the drilling gangs and do most of the stevedoring both at Kuala Belait and for the company at Labuan,” indicated that most Indians working in the oilfields during this period were hired by labour contractors Twelve of these Indians lived in “company accommodation” of which Book 18 identified two distinct sites—Dayak and Malay. All other groups, if not living locally, were presented as living in “company accommodation.”
Borneo History .net
Many thanks to Mike Kueh
