Change We Must

While this is music to our ears, the message is clear, PM Najib do not buy the stories of Taib and his gang of lap dogs.

To ensure this is done systematically, PM Najib must ensure a committee to oversea this survey must not be entrusted into the sole care of Land and Survey Department.

We suggest they rope in the assistance of Dayak NGO such as SADIA and BRISMAS to ensure impartiality of the survey team.

Failing which the very reason the will power to survey all NCR Lands and have it gazzetted have been delayed till PM Najib see the real need for it to be done for Barisan Nasional to remain in power will end up as just retheoric and the allocation of RM20 million of tax payers money wasted.

Subsequent to the announcement by PM Najib, we have hypocrites coming up with the new land policy by Thief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud and the Deputy Thief Minister Alfred Jabu. Read all about it here. Incidently Thief Minister Abdul Taib and all his cronys are the very same gang of thiefs and bandits resisting the call by Dayaks and Dayaks NGO to have all NCR Land surveyed!

Similar to the reduction of Land Lease Renewable announced in Sibu, is not too late to implement the survey of NCR Land now that educated and more aware Dayaks are arousing the awareness of the rural Dayaks? Will this now see the day of the light?

KUCHING: It took 47 years for the government to decide to survey native customary rights (NCR) land, issue titles and return the land to the rightful owners. Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak allocated RM20 million to carry out the survey works.

Sarawak Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud should have made the announcement instead of Najib as land matters come under the purview of the state. So, why did Najib make the announcement? And why did Taib refuse all this while to survey NCR land?

Najib made the decision last week after visiting Long Banga, Baram, an interior seldom visited even by Sarawak state ministers. He must have heard about the Dayaks’ grouses after he took over as prime minister last year. To learn more about their problems, he sent his Sarawakian minister Idris Jala to seek the truth. And based on Jala’s reports, Najib announced the decision.

It not only caught state government leaders by surprise, it also embarrassed them. But Najib does not seem to care; his federal government’s survival depends on solving the problem. To continue to occupy Putrajaya, he must win over the Dayak-majority parliamentary constituencies. There are 23 Dayak majority and Dayak-mixed constituencies.

The decision puts great pressure on the state government to survey the NCR land. It must show support and react immediately.Thus, the state government issued a press statement not only to concur with the prime minister’s announcement but also to say that Taib’s government has approved a new NCR land initiative.

By Joseph Tawie @ Free Malaysia Today

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Iban natives of nine longhouses from Sebangan and Sebuyau have warned of serious consequences if a private company, Quality Concrete Holdings, persists in logging activities in their ‘pulau galau’ (communal forest).

Native community leader Nicholas Mujah conveyed this warning to officials at the land and survey department in Kota Samarahan yesterday after handing a memorandum containing several pieces of evidence to prove the community own the communal forest.

“Now that we have submitted these pieces of evidence, we want the department to make a decision as required by our meeting early this month in Sebuyau district office.

“We want them to inform the forest department and Quality Concrete Holding to cease their logging activities. If they persist, do not blame us if we take the law into our hands,” said Mujah to the officials of land and survey department.

Mujah said among the evidence forwarded to the department was proof that the ‘pulau galau’ at Bukit Bediri and Setika were gazetted as their communal forest in 1961.

Under the gazette, anyone wishing to extract timber or collect any jungle products will have to consult the Penghulu and longhouse headmen.

Peaceful demonstration
The natives use timber from the forest to collect jungle products, fish and hunt to meet their daily domestic needs. They claimed their forefathers had acquired the said areas even before it was gazetted as a communal forest.

The existence of old rubber gardens, orchard groves, settlements, burial grounds and sacred shrines in the areas, especially at Bukit Bediri and Setika is ample proof of their occupation.

Twenty representatives from the nine longhouses led by Numpang Suntai, the group’s leader and Mujah, who is also the secretary general of Sarawak Dayak Iban Association handed over the memorandum.

Early this month, about 250 natives from the longhouses held a peaceful demonstration in front of the Sebuyau district office in protest against the licensing of their ‘pulau galau’.

They carried banners and placards while their representatives met with officials of the Sarawak Forest Department, Sarawak Forest Corporation, Land and Survey, and Quality Concrete Holding to settle the dispute over three pieces of forest.

The natives claimed that the 3,305 hectares of forest between Sungai Sebangan and Sungai Sebuyau are their communal forest and part of their native customary rights land. It is also a water catchment area supplying water to Sebangan Bazaar and the surrounding villages.

But the forest department has given the Quality Concrete Holding a licence to log in the area where some of the rarest species of timber are found.

Free Malaysia Today

Is an uprising against a neglecting state government, corrupt Forestry Department and district office simmering through the native networks in Sarawak?

That’s a question uppermost on activists’ minds following a series of confrontations in recent weeks between native communities with loggers in Sarawak.

In the latest incident, 500 angry Ibans from five longhouses in Sebangan and Sebuyau in the Simunjan district stormed the site and office of logging concessionaire Quarry Concrete Holdings Sdn Bhd in a bid to protect their communal forest and land.

The natives confiscated keys of the company’s five bulldozers, two excavators and five lorries in the incident which occurred last Thursday after the local district office failed to resolve a dispute between the natives and the Quality Concrete.

Both representatives from the company and natives had met unsuccessfully on June 22 at the district office in Sebuyau.

Nicholas Mujah, a social activists in the area, said: “The natives have surrendered the keys of the company’s vehicles to the Sebuyau police for safekeeping until the matter is resolved.

“We told the workers at the logging camp, who come as far as from Kapit, to return home pending settlement of the case with the district officer.

“The district officer has been informed and we are waiting for him to arrange a second meeting,” said Mujah who is also the secretary general of Sarawak Dayak Iban Association (SADIA).

On 22 June the Sebuyau Police called for both sides to a meeting in an attempt to settle the case, but the meeting failed to resolve the problem, said Mujah.

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Despite protests from the villagers and longhouse folk, the Forest Department continues to ignore the plight of the people between Sungai Sebangan and Sungai Sebuyau when it issued a licence to a company to log timber in their “pulau galau” (communal forest).

“This is the third company that has been given the licence,” said Nicholas Mujah, secretary-general of Sarawak Dayak Iban Association.

He said two other companies have been given a similar licence some years ago, “but when they found out that the area is our communal forest, they gave up”.

“We are wondering why the department has been ignoring our protests,” said Mujah.

The licence was issued to Quarry Concrete Holdings recently.

The villagers are also mulling legal action against the department and the company.

Mujah said the timber in the area is meant for the villagers’ domestic consumption. The site is also a water catchment area supplying water to Sebangan bazaar and nearby villages and longhouses.

On Monday, a group of people representing Kampung Entangor, Kampung Sungai Ijok, Kampung Arus, Kampung Tungkah Dayak and Kampung Ensika went to the company’s campsite to demand the company stop logging in their “pulau galau”.

Later, the group led by Mujah, who hails from Kampung Ensika, lodged a report at the Sebuyau police station.

“At the advice of the police, the company has ceased its operations and both parties have been asked to appear at a meeting at the police station on June 22,” said Mujah.

According to him, the licence signed by the director of the Forest Department authorised the company to log timber in three parcels of forest land, which are about 3,305 hectares between Sungai Sebangan and Sungai Sebuyau from Nov 30, 2009 to Nov 29, 2010.

The department has agreed to give the company a 12-month extension starting from March 5, 2010.
– Free Malaysia Today

KUCHING: The Sarawak Dayak Iban Association (Sadia) has urged the government to survey all native customary rights (NCR) lands if it wants to solve the NCR land problems, which are causing great misery and threatening the livelihood of the natives.

Sadia secretary-general Nicholas Mujah said: “The state government should follow the advice of the Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Idris Jala, who has recommended that all NCR lands be surveyed and be given titles.

“Jala is echoing the recommendation made by AJN Richards in his Land Report of 1962.

“If all the NCR lands are surveyed and given titles, then the issues concerning the NCR lands will be solved.

“At present, the problems have got out of hand and are causing great misery and threatening the livelihood of the natives,” said Mujah when asked to comment on Chief Minister Taib Mahmud’s statement.

Taib has accused a small group of disgruntled people of instigating a protest against the government’s land policy.

Taib said these irresponsible people were inclined to use small problems to instigate the people to go against the government to create political upheaval.

“The people should not listen to them, otherwise they would fall prey to their irresponsible deeds,” he said.

The chief minister had also revealed that the Department of Land and Surveys had created more than 188,000 titles for native customary lands.

“As such, it was wrong and misleading for a group of disgruntled sawmill people to instigate our people to protest against the government’s land policy,” he had reportedly said.

‘Landowners prepared to go to jail’

Mujah did not dispute that the government had issued land titles, but what he knew was that the government issued land titles only for plots of land where the people built their houses.

“The house owners are given TOL (temporary occupation licence) after the surroundings of their houses have been surveyed and this is what the government has been shouting about giving titles to NCR lands.

“Certainly not the NCR lands per se; otherwise how can they explain the hundreds of NCR land cases before the court?

“The landowners have sued the government and companies for taking away their untitled NCR land. So far, the natives have won almost all of the cases that have been decided by the court,” Mujah said.

He also queried the government on the existence of a Land and Survey Department circular directing that no further titles be issued on NCR lands.

The directive was given after Sarawak Land Custody and Rehabilitation Authority had been issuing land titles to scheme participants in the 1990s.

“If the government is sincere, it should revoke the circular and start surveying all NCR lands and ensure the lands are given titles,” said Mujah.

He added that the landowners would continue to defend their rights and they have no fear to reveal the truth.

“These people are prepared to go to jail to defend their rights,” he added — FMT