Awang Tengah assures Section 6 protects native land
The Ministry of Urban Development and Natural Resources assures that Section 6 of the Sarawak Land Code protects the right of natives over their land in the state.
Delivering his winding up speech at the State Legislative Assembly sitting yesterday, Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Awang Tengah Ali Hasan who is also Minister of Urban Development and Second Minister of Natural Resources said a case which proved that the native rights were protected under the Section 6 of the Sarawak Land Code was the outcome of the Federal Court case of The Superintendent of Land and Survey Department, Bintulu and others versus Amit Salleh and others.
In the case, it was decided that any extinguishment of rights within gazetted Section 6 communal reserve land would require payment of compensation.
He thus emphasised the fact that gazetting the area under Section 6 of the Land Code is the first step to register and protect the rights of the people over their land put into a proper record the land areas were demarcated, plotted onto the map and deposited with the Land and Survey Department, which can be inspected .
The second step is to survey the land individually and subsequently issue them with a document of title in perpetuity under Section 18 of the Land Code.
“We have carried out direct individual survey for the past 50 years since 1960s through Settlement Operation, Part III of the Land Code and Survey of Kampung Tradisional but it was proven slow and was exposed to unnecessary issues in settling individual dispute on the ground hence delaying the process of such survey,” he added.
Awang Tengah added that Sarawak government is now focusing on converting more than 700,000 hectares (1.7 million acres) of land gazetted under Section 6 into individual Section 18 document of titles as this is a continuous effort and should be supported by every lawmakers in Sarawak.
He disclosed that through the new survey work which started in 2010, an area of 880,541 hectares (2,175,817 acres) has been successfully measured by the perimeter through first stage, of which 723,344 hectares (1,787,383 acres) have been gazetted up to April 30 this year.
“That means that in just eight years we have successfully measured three times more than the previous method. The second stage of the programme, the area under Section 6 will be measured separately for the purpose of issuing land title under Section 18 of the Code State land,” he said.
To date, 26,036 individual lots have been successfully measured involving an area of 32,376 hectares (80,001 acres) which has been and will be issued a letter of title under Section 18 of the State Land Code.
He also revealed that the Sarawak government has approved a budget allocation of RM40 million for the new survey work while the new Pakatan Harapan federal government also allocated a budget for the survey work of RM21.5 million, only RM10.75 out of the allocation from the federal government has been disbursed so far.
He was replying to issues raised by Krian assemblyman Ali Biju who questioned the results of the survey work and his contention that the Section 6 of the Sarawak Land Code does not protect the rights of the native in Sarawak.