KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah Native Land Owners Association (SANLODA) yesterday expressed its support for the 2014 State Budget.
SANLODA chairman, Datuk Seri Panglima Dr Clarence B. Malakun, said the 2014 Budget was in line with the theme of ‘Ensuring the continuity of the well-being of the people’, which reflected the government’s transparent, sincere and continued commitment to the citizen of Malaysia in Sabah.
He also congratulated the Chief Minister, Datuk Seri Musa Haji Aman, who is also the patron of SANLODA.
“The reduction of poverty rate in Sabah from 19.7 percent in 2009 to 8.1 percent in 2013 proved the efforts of the government had brought good results. Statistics confirmed that the Sabah native population are mostly the people that fall under the ‘hardcore poverty’ and ‘relative poverty’ categories. Thus, the success in reducing the poverty rate means the success by the government to improve the welfare of the Sabah natives,” he said.
He added that SANLODA, on the same note, was also pleased that under the Federal Budget announced in October, RM109 million have been allocated to enhance economic development and well-being of the Orang Asli community, i.e. the Bumiputra natives of Peninsular Malaysia and in particular the fair allocation of RM50 million for land surveying and customary land ownership verification.
Clarence expressed his gratitude to the Prime Minister, Dato Seri Najib Tun Razak for the focus and noble consideration for the Bumiputra native community.
“The allocation for land surveying and customary land ownership verification is indeed timely and good for resolving many critical native land issues, for instance, the multi-claims in native customary land by the Sabah natives. The allocation, for example, could help in the speedy issuance of land title for the owners of these native lands. This then would enable them to develop their legal lands to improve further their socio-economic status,” he said.
He added that this was the role that SANLODA would play — for the positive transformation on native land matters, enabling the native land owners to leverage their landed assets in congruence with the Government’s transformation agenda by raising the people standards of living and enhancing the per capita income of all Malaysians,” he said.