KUALA LUMPUR - AUTHORITIES in Malaysian Borneo have called on police to investigate reports that women and girls from the Penan tribe have been raped by workers from jungle logging camps.

The plight of the Penan people was made famous in the 1990s by environmental activist Bruno Manser, who campaigned to protect their way of life and fend off the loggers, before he vanished in 2000 amid suspicion of foul play.

'Let the police do a full investigation. It is important that we get to the truth of all these things,' Mr George Chan, deputy chief minister of Sarawak state, said of the rape claims, according to the state news agency Bernama.

'This is criminal but we must have very firm evidence as it could portray a very bad national image,' he said.

Allegations of attacks on the Penan tribe by workers from prominent Malaysian logging companies were last month reported by the Swiss-based Bruno Manser Fund (BMF), which champions indigenous rights.

The group said that Penan women from the remote Middle Baram area of Sarawak had accused workers from timber firms Interhill and Samling of harassing and raping them.

Youngsters who must travel from their villages in the dense rainforest to boarding schools in larger towns often rely on lifts from logging vehicles, it said.

'I want to make it known that we are being sexually abused by the timber company workers on a regular basis,' the BMF reported a young Penan woman as saying.

The group said the perpetrators, who were usually drunk, also targeted women living in settlements and young schoolgirls who were home during school holidays.

It said complaints made to the police and authorities have had no effect.

Another deputy chief minister from Sarawak, Alfred Jabu, had recently rubbished the allegations and dismissed BMFs claims as baseless, Bernama said.

Sarawak and Sabah states make up Malaysia's half of Borneo island, which is shared with Indonesia.

Malaysia's human rights commission has also called for a full investigation into the rape claims.

'These allegations are very serious in nature, especially if they involved natives who are isolated and defenceless,' its top official in Sarawak, Mohamad Hirman Ritom, told the Star newspaper last week.

'They are allegations of a criminal nature, not just a violation of human rights. We will have to visit those areas where such alleged crimes took place and speak to the people,' he said. -- AFP