Kilat (centre) with Bumiputera Agenda Steering Unit (Teraju) executive Ahmad Asrol (third left) and DCCI members at the event.
KUCHING: Dayak Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DCCI) has requested the Pakatan Harapan (PH) federal government allocate special quotas in respect of service, permits, scholarships, and other privileges to the Dayak community in accordance with the Federal Constitution.
DCCI stressed that specific programmes targeted at the needs of the Dayak community should be implemented and accelerated, because these will level the playing field to enable more Dayaks to participate in business and the national economy.
DCCI deputy president Kilat Beriak said this during the Congress on the Future of the Bumiputera and Nation 2018 in Kuala Lumpur and the pre-Congress in Putrajaya, recently.
He had told the audience that the implementation of the various economic policies and Malaysia Plans for over four decades had uplifted only a certain segment of the Bumiputera community.
“The Dayak community in Sarawak and the Kadazan Dusun community in Sabah as a whole were left out and left behind. The Dayaks were not ‘noticed’ on the ‘radar screen’. The various economic plans and policies did not permeate to the Dayak community. The Dayaks’ participation in business, commerce, and industry remains very marginal; only a handful of Dayaks have made significant progress but the majority of the Dayaks still lag far behind other communities in Malaysia.
“There is this general feeling among the Dayak community, rightly or wrongly, that we are being marginalised. It is obvious that the past common approach adopted by the government for all Bumiputera is not effective in so far as the Dayak community in Sarawak is concerned,” he said.
He said some of the Dayak business community have the relevant expertise and experience in various sectors of commerce and industry, but being new to business are handicapped by their limited capital.
To address this, Kilat called on the government to provide more funds for the survey and issuance of documents of title for Native Customary Rights (NCR) land to the natives, to enable them to unlock frozen assets in order to enhance their capital.
“Most of the government projects set a very high threshold for contractors’ eligibility, which creates inherently biased opportunities in favour of the wealthy conglomerates. In short, government projects are monopolised by the elites,” he said.
With regards to mega projects, he suggested they be divided into smaller packages, with some reserved for tender among Dayak contractors.
On a related matter, he also hoped the federal government would prioritise Dayak companies for rural development projects as it has failed to take cognisance of local adat, customs, culture, conditions, and circumstances in framing and implementing policies with regards to Sarawak.
Kilat said this included requiring not only halal certification but also wholly Muslim-owned companies to be eligible to tender for cooked food ration supplies and catering facilities for rural schools in Sarawak, which may have no Muslim students.
“These requirements automatically and unfairly exclude members of DCCI and the local business community from participating in such a tender.”
He said DCCI also wants the federal government to prioritise and increase funding to improve infrastructure and educational facilities in rural Sarawak.
He added that the federal government should also allocate more seats or set up quotas for Dayak students at tertiary institutions and provide more scholarship funds or other forms of financial assistance for Dayak students.
“We also hope the federal government will allocate grants to DCCI for its capacity building and entrepreneurial development programme to promote Dayak participation in commerce, trade, and industry,” he said.