Uggah tells Xavier to read his statement, not just news headline
If he had done so, he could see that I have never said he wanted to strip off Sarawak autonomy on its land matter as reported in the portal.
KUCHING: Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas told Minister of Water, Land and Mineral Resources Dr Xavier Jayakumar to read the whole text of his original statement instead of just zooming in on the headline of the statement by a news portal before making any hasty assumption.
“If he had done so, he could see that I have never said he wanted to strip off Sarawak autonomy on its land matter as reported in the portal,” said Uggah who is Minister of Modernisation of Agriculture, Native Land and Regional Development yesterday.
He said this in response to Xavier’s accusation in the papers that Uggah had misconstrued his statement on the three set of Land Codes for Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak to be placed in one document for the purpose of presentation at any international convention.
“But now I have a question for him. Did he make the remark that it was unfair for the country to have three Land Codes in its
Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas, Deputy Chief Minister
Land Administration at the recent Majlis Tanah Negara meeting?,” asked Uggah who was present representing Sarawak government at that particular national land council meeting.
“It was after my protest over his remark that he proposed for all these three documents namely the Kanun Tanah Negara, the Sabah Land Code and the Sarawak Land Code to be combined into one document for presentation purpose at seminars and dialogues to avoid confusion,” Uggah said.
On Tuesday Xavier issued a statement clarifying that he never intended to advocate the combination of the three land codes into a single national land code.
He said all he ever said was that he wanted all these three land codes to be combined into one document for the purpose of any forum or convention at international level.
This would enable him on behalf of the Malaysian government, particularly that of the Ministry of Water, Land and Mineral Resources, to present and explain land and water issues in seminars and dialogues.
If all these land codes are inside one single document, confusion may be avoided during presentation, he said when reacting to a Dec 10 2018 news portal article entitled “Xavier Jayakumar wanted to strip Sarawak’s autonomy, says DCM”.