Regions

A rollout schedule shows 22 Ulu Baram communities still unscheduled for grid access

A district-level power access programme's own target note sets a 2029 date for its own defined catchment, distinct from any wider state effort. The rollout schedule and a next-phase document do not fully agree on which communities come next.

By Michael Anak Ubin · 22 July 2026 · 4 min read

Case names, entities and officials in this report are composite and illustrative. References to public bodies describe their statutory role only.

The target

The Ulu Baram Community Power Access Programme, a district-level effort formed in 2023 to coordinate conventional grid extension to longhouse communities in the Ulu Baram area of Sarawak's interior, sets an internal target of connecting every community in its catchment to the grid by the end of 2029, according to the programme's own target note. The note defines the catchment as communities not reached by grid extension as of the programme's 2023 formation, regardless of whether a community already receives power through a separate initiative, and states plainly that its figures are not a count of overall electricity access in the area.

The programme's baseline survey, conducted when it was formed in 2023, lists 210 longhouse communities within that grid-extension catchment, along the Baram river's upper tributaries. The survey does not include communities outside the programme's stated catchment or state how many catchment communities, if any, already receive power through another means.

The target note does not set an interim milestone before the 2029 date, and the programme's rollout schedule, a separate document, is the source this desk used to check progress against that single end date.

What the schedule reports

The rollout schedule, updated through June 2026, lists 158 of the 210 catchment communities as connected to the grid, with the remaining entries marked either 'in progress' or 'not yet scheduled.'

Of the entries not yet connected, the schedule marks 30 as 'in progress,' meaning a contractor has been assigned and work has started, and 22 as 'not yet scheduled,' meaning no contractor or timeline has been entered against the community's line.

The schedule does not state when the 22 'not yet scheduled' communities will receive an assigned contractor; the target note is likewise silent on what happens to communities that remain unconnected past the 2029 date.

The rollout schedule attributes the pace of the 158 connections completed so far to two connection methods: grid extension, used for communities within a stated distance of an existing line, and standalone solar-hybrid systems, used where the schedule marks grid extension as 'not cost-effective' under the programme's own siting criteria. The schedule does not state how many of the 158 connections used each method.

Where the gap is widest

The schedule groups communities by river sub-catchment. The Apoh sub-catchment carries the largest number of 'not yet scheduled' entries, 9 of the 22 recorded across the programme, according to the schedule's own breakdown.

The programme's coordination office holds a separate site-access log recording which of the 9 unscheduled Apoh communities are reachable by an existing logging road versus those the log marks as requiring a new access route to be built first.

Six of the 9 unscheduled Apoh communities are marked in the site-access log as requiring a new access route. The log does not state whether building that access route is included in the rollout schedule's current budget or would require a separate allocation.

The schedule's sub-catchment breakdown lists five other sub-catchments with unscheduled entries, ranging from one to four communities each, according to the schedule's own figures.

What the next phase covers

A next-phase document, circulated to the programme's coordination office in May, lists 15 communities proposed for connection between 2027 and 2029, which the document describes as drawn from the current pool of unscheduled entries.

Two of the 15 communities named in the next-phase document do not appear on the current rollout schedule at all, under any status marking, and the document does not explain why they are absent from the schedule that is meant to precede it.

Thirteen of the 15 next-phase communities are drawn from the current rollout schedule's 'not yet scheduled' pool, since two of the 15 do not appear on that schedule at all; neither the next-phase document nor the rollout schedule names the remaining nine of the 22 unscheduled communities in any forward-looking document this desk has seen, leaving no stated path for them toward the target note's 2029 date.

The next-phase document does not carry a budget figure, stating only that funding 'is to be confirmed in a subsequent allocation exercise,' a phrase the coordination office's own minutes, from a meeting in April, use in an identical form.

The coordination office has not stated when the subsequent allocation exercise will take place, or whether the six communities requiring a new access route are among the 15 named for the next phase. The next-phase document's cover note describes the list of 15 as a working draft rather than a finalised schedule, subject to revision once the allocation exercise concludes.

The families in the six communities with no road don't know if they're in the fifteen for the next phase, because the document that names the fifteen doesn't say which ones need a road built first.