PBS disagrees with Land and Survey director on NCR

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KOTA KINABALU: Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS) would not subscribe to the mode of interpretation used by Land and Survey director Datuk Osman Jamal, seemingly to nullify the established legal provisions for the rights of the indigenous community to their native customary rights (NCR) land after 1930.

PBS secretary general Datuk Henrynus Amin said PBS regretted the recent statement by Osman on the NCR land which he said was made in haste without first consulting the Sabah State Cabinet and without considering the sensitivity of the issue at this time.

PBS would not allow the status of the NCR land after 1930 to be decided solely by government bureaucrats.

There should be proper judicial hearings to establish the proper legal interpretations of the NCR land laws,” said Henrynus when speaking at the opening of the Kuamut PBS annual general meeting.

PBS also called for more legal experts to come forward to give their views or even public debate to help the State interpret the original intention of the framers of the NCR land law.

Henrynus noted the NCR announcement was made against the background of numerous legal challenges to the State on NCR land disputes.

He said if government bureaucrats were tempted to think the NCR land problem would go away or resolve by itself by simply changing the established legal interpretation of the relevant law on NCR land, they would be wrong.

The indigenous community, he said, would not concede even an inch of NCR land to the State if native laws are not respected and their customary rights to their land inherited from their forefathers were being nullified merely by loopholes in the Sabah Land Ordinance.

If indeed the legal interpretation of the Sabah Land Ordinance should nullify NCR land, PBS reiterated the party’s earlier call for a new amendment to the relevant laws to re-establish and strengthen the legal provisions for the rights of the indigenous community to NCR land after 1930,” he said.