Batang Berjuntai 1947 ~ 1952 Extract legends of the Dragonfly

"Batang Berjuntai" means a dangling branch in Malay. There used to be a railway line connecting Batang Berjuntai with Batu Arang and onwards to the mainline of Malayan Railways at Kuang. In 2007 Batang Berjuntai was renamed Bestari Jaya. The old railway line between the town and Batu Arang was dismantled by the Japanese during World War II and never reconstructed. Bestari Jaya (formerly Batang Berjuntai) is a town and a mukim in Kuala Selangor District, Selangor, Malaysia. It is 40 km NW from Kuala Lumpur. In 1947 this whole area was a hotbed for communist terrorist activity and a dangerous place to live or travel about safely due to the many ambushes both the communist bandits and the security forces engaged in daily. It was the years of living dangerously.

Note:  A mukim is a type of administrative division used in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. The word mukim is loanword in English. However, it was also originally a loanword in Malay from the Arabic word: مقيم (means resident). The closest English translation for mukim is precinct, commune, ward or parish.

Tin mining Dredge Malaya 1950s

Because of the high price of rubber back then and the employment it gives, it is seldom realized that the tin mining industry, in fact, was the chief factor in the development of Malaya from 1850- 1930. The revenue from tin exports and opium imports practically made up the whole of the government's revenue up to 1910. And it must be remembered that opium was smoked by Chinese labourers who were nearly all in the tin industry. At no time before 1941 did the government revenue from rubber exports exceed that from tin exports in the Federation of Malaya (formerly F.M.S. and U.F.M. s.). The principal methods of mining and recovering tin ore were and still are by dredging, gravel pumping, hydraulic mining, open-cast, small workings without machinery, and dulang washing. Dredges were and still are all owned and managed by Europeans and employ many Indian and Malay technicians as electricians, fitters, mechanics, charge men, winchmen, etc. The Chinese miners used the gravel pump chiefly and produced almost all their ore by this method. There were very few hydraulic, open cast, or lode mines. The old methods or mining without machinery still existed, chiefly in Perak, but the output was insignificant, and these were all worked by Chinese and a few Malays. The special method of dulang washing had over 10,000 Chinese women with a few hundred Malay women in pre-war times. Because the tin mines were profitable vested British interest in Malaya, the communist terrorist CTs targeted these sites hoping to disrupt or stop tin ore production. Due to their often  isolated locations, Special Constables and Jungle Squads were used to protect such sites during the Malaya Emergency. One such site was Berjuntai Tin at Batang Berjuntai in the Malayan state of Kuala Selangor 1952.