Land title granted under existing sec 18 of Land Code more superior – See

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See Chee How

THE land title which is granted under the existing section 18 of the Land Code is more superior than the land title issued under the proposed section 6A in the Land Code (Amendment) Bill, 2018 due to various restrictions, said See Chee How (PKR-Batu Lintang).

See, who debated on the bill at the State Legislative Assembly today, said under the proposed Section 6A of the Bill, the native community cannot claim “pemakai menoa” and “pulau galau” or such other similar native customary or ancestral territorial domains, including “tempat cari makan” for the native Malay communities that they are given full recognition and force of law.

“Maybe the Deputy Chief Minister (Uggah) was not properly and fully briefed on the implications of Section 6A, with regards the native territorial domain,” he added.

He also said that under Section 18 of the State Land Code with its short title ‘Grant to natives’ – it is stipulated in sub-section 1 that: “where the Director, subject to any direction from the Minister, is satisfied that a native has occupied and used any area of unalienated State land in accordance with rights acquired by customary tenure amounting to ownership of the land for residential or agricultural purposes, he may, subject to section 18A, issue to the native a grant in perpetuity of that area of land free of premium rent and other charges.”

See said under the proposed amendment Bill, “Native communal title” means a title issued in accordance with section 6A over a native territorial domain, granted in perpetuity but subject to the many restrictions stipulated in section 6A, including the inequitable and even discriminating constraint that the native territorial domain shall not exceed 500 hectares, according to section 6A(2).

According to him, under the Land Code (Amendment) Bill 2018, it will bring two issues to the community of Kampung Lebor who have proven the existence of their native customary rights over an area of land which they called “pemakai menoa” of over 5,000 hectares in court.

He revealed that the community of Kampung Lebor are also entitled to a grant in perpetuity of that area of land free of premium rent and other charges under section 18 of the Land Code.

“Under the amendment bill, the community will only be allowed the maximum of 500 hectares of land for their “native territorial domain”,” said See.

Secondly, he said the cap of 500 hectares for an area to be claimed as “native territorial domain” for a community such as Kampung Lebor, with more than 250 families will mean that each family will have less than two hectare of land as their share of the “native territorial domain”.

This, he said is certainly insufficient for the family if they have ten members to plant paddy or cash crop for their subsistence.

“It is therefore wrong for the Deputy Chief Minister (Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas) to criticise the private member’s bill which was brought to this august House by the Honourable member of Ba Kelalan (Baru Bian),” he added.

According to him, Baru have proposed to amend only Section 2 of the Land Code to give full recognition and full force of law to “pemakai menoa”, “pulau galau” or such other similar native customary or ancestral territorial domains, including “tempat cari makan” for our native Malay communities.

See said this will allow the other provisions of the Land Code as they are – such as section 18 – to give effect to the recognition and force of law to the native customary rights land of all the various native communities.