Awang Tengah (left) hugs a perpetuity-titled land owner, who is blind.
MIRI: The Sarawak government’s Native Customary Rights (NCR) land survey initiative, which has been carried out over the past decade, has facilitated the Land and Survey Department Sarawak in surveying three times more native land parcels than what had been achieved between the 1960s and 2010.
Such impactful result can be attributed to the department’s greater efficiency and capacity, beginning with the initial survey in 2010, which has since greatly benefitted many NCR land owners across Sarawak.
Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Awang Tengah Ali Hasan highlighted this yesterday at the presentation ceremony of perpetuity individual land and ‘Kampung Melayu’ (Malay village) communal reserves titles, issued under Section 18 and 6 of Sarawak Land Code, to 202 recipients.
“From the 1960s to 2010, only less than 260,000 hectares (642,460 acres) of NCR land were settled, but under the new initiative – starting with communal reserves – the survey has enabled the coverage of over 934,288 hectares (2.3 million acres) under Phase I,” he said, adding that the second phase involved survey on individual lots and the issuance of perpetuity land titles under Section 18 of Sarawak Land Code.
Awang Tengah also assured all that the Sarawak government would be continuing this initiative and thus, it had allocated RM40 million each for 2019 and 2020, including the funds meant to further strengthen Land and Survey Department’s manpower with 467 personnel of various categories.
“This is to enable the department to support the state government’s aspiration of rolling out development projects and recognising land ownership in Sarawak.”
Awang Tengah, who is also Second Minister of Urban Development and Resources, said the government’s development agenda would aim to ‘spread urbanisation into the suburbs’, which would involve land acquisitions or conversion of native land areas for residential and/or commercial development.
Nevertheless, he stressed that based on the records, the Sarawak government had always recognised NCR land, supported by evidence of its establishment as stipulated in Sarawak Land Code.
The government had also moved to amend to give force of law to native territorial domains, as the court pointed out that this ‘was legislatively missing earlier’.
He then slammed certain quarters for making a number of false claims, such as Section 6 being used to take away native land.
“They have also claimed that the state government would present land titles whenever an election is around the corner; this is baseless as this (NCR survey and issuance of titles) is done throughout the year,” he said.
Awang Tengah advised those issued with the individual titles to turn their land lots into productive assets, and to always keep them within families, instead of selling them for quick short-term gains and possibly ending up becoming destitute later on.
Meanwhile, Lambir assemblyman Ripin Lamat called upon the landowners to work on making their land productive, in view of the Bakam and Beraya villages being only at a short distance from Miri city.
Under the new NCR land initiative, the divisional Land and Survey Department had surveyed 73,353 hectares involving 27 areas across Miri Division as at end of last year. This also covered the communal reserves of Kampung Melayu Bakong (475 hectares).
The department had also issued 1,138 perpetuity titles for agriculture, with an area covering 4.605 hectares slated for the second phase of this initiative.
“The perpetuity-titled land is priceless; thus, I hope the title holders would never sell the land for short gains,” reminded Ripin.
Assistant Minister of Local Government and Housing Datu Dr Penguang Manggil, Miri Division Resident Mastapa Julaihi, Land and Survey Department assistant director Unus Tambi, and Land and Survey Department Miri superintendent Hardi Fadillah Hamzah were also present.