Association urged to help Native Title landowners

PUTATAN: The Sabah Native Landowners Association (Sanloda) has been urged to communicate with all agriculture related agencies in the country so that they can assist Native Title (MT) landowners in Sabah.

The former parliament member here, Datuk Dr Marcus Makin Mojigoh, said that there were many idle NT lands in rural Sabah and left as secondary jungle and bushes because of urban migration among the younger generation.

“They are not keen on farming because they consider this as a blue-collar job and the income is not as lucrative as, for example, working in the factory, restaurant or building industry,” he said in a statement.

Mojigoh urged the government and its relevant agencies to help those interested to work on their land and carry out commercial farming activities to help market their produce.

He added that this was crucial since farmers are unaware where they can sell their produce.

At the same time, he queried what happened to the cottage industry that was once being promoted by the Rural and Regional Development Ministry several years ago.

“Is there really any cottage industry that has been developed in Sabah then?”

Mojigoh also said that the Native Title lands cannot be developed or commercialised for industrial use unless they are first converted to Country Lease (CL).

“Therefore, if a native man wanted to use his own NT land for either commercial or industrial use, he would have to convert such title to either CL or Town Lease (TL) where he would be subjected to extremely high yearly premium paid to both the government and local authority.

“I mentioned the above because we have yet to have a policy to ease the burden of the NT landowner if they want to convert the land use, particularly the NT landowners in the urban area,” he said.

He added that many of the NT lands around the Kota Kinabalu, Penampang, Putatan, Tuaran and other areas near the developing township are nearly all gone and some of these NT lands are owned by non-natives.