Work on their new site was supposed to have started a month ago, so that they could move into their new homes before the winter. The villagers are to name the place Tsoi Yuen Tsuen, where they intend to build eco-friendly houses and return to farming vegetables.

However, construction costs had risen 30 per cent since the land was surveyed a year ago for the relocation of the villagers, which meant a third of the families did not have enough money to pay for new homes, said Chu Hoi-dick, a member of the Tsoi Yuen Tsuen Concern Group.

Fellow group member Chen Yun-chung said: 'If the project was about building a few houses with all the infrastructure already provided by the government, it would be much cheaper. But we are building a new village from scratch.

'Infrastructure, such as roads, electricity, fresh water supply and sewage treatment, accounts for 30 per cent of the construction cost.'

Among those affected are Lai Kam-lan, 59, and her husband, who need another HK$200,000 to build an 800 sq ft two-storey house and their share of the infrastructure, including an access road.

'Most people, including my niece, think we are billionaires under the government's special compensation deal,' Lai said. 'We are not. We are tenants. We didn't get much, while a large chunk of the money went into buying this piece of land.'

The villagers realised only at the point of signing the HK$18 million contract at a law firm late last year that HK$7.57 million - or 42 per cent of the selling price - were going to two middlemen who had recommended the land to them through Heung Yee Kuk chairman Lau Wong-fat. At that stage, there was no backing out as they had spent months negotiating.

Their dilemma did not come to the public's attention until Monday's report in the newspaper Ming Pao, which named the pair of middlemen as Tang Yung-yiu and Lee Lin-wan, who live in a nearby village.

Chu said his support group was pondering what to do over the increased costs. 'There are two options: one is to find a cheaper contractor, though the one we have is already the cheapest in our tender.

'The other is to cut the construction items. Villagers are considering building the road themselves, while some families have decided to build only a one-storey house. There hasn't been agreement yet.'

For Chu and Chen, the most important issue now is to keep the displaced villagers in an upbeat mood and help them earn some money, as the community has had no income after giving up their old houses. They have been staying in temporary homes put up by the MTR Corporation on the new site for three months.

'Small-scale organic farming has started in the [new] village,' Chu said. They were also running guided tours of the site for city dwellers so that the villagers would know their supporters had not abandoned them, he said.

For Lai, she has no regrets about joining the effort to rebuild Tsoi Yuen Tsuen instead of moving to public flats, as some of her former neighbours had done.

'We were used to living next to our farm; we can't survive in public housing flats,' she said.