Gazetted NCR land indefeasible

SARIKEI: Native customary rights (NCR) land which had been gazetted as Bumiputera communal reserve under Section 6 of the Land Code through the government’s perimeter survey initiative are indefeasible.

Issuance of gazette notices upon completion of perimeter survey process meant the NCR land concerned belong to the community as stakeholders.

Minister in the Chief Minister’s Office, Tan Sri Datuk Amar Adenan Satem said this when presenting gazette notices to the headmen of 44 longhouses from Pakan and Julau area whose NCR land had been delineated under the perimeter survey initiative.

The headmen receiving the gazette notices from Adenan at a ceremony held at the Divisional Land and Survey office here yesterday comprised 22 from Jalan Pakan/Sesco and Jalan Pakan Entabai, Pakan; 22 from Sungai Genega, Ulu Kota, Pakan; and four from Sungai Ensiring area, Julau.

“The NCR land gazetted as Bumiputera communal reserve under Section 6 of the Land Code belongs to the rightful claimants. Nobody can dispute it and if the government were to acquire them for development purposes, it has to compensate the land owners accordingly,” he stressed.

Adenan advised the land owners concerned to continue rendering their co-operation to the Land and Survey staff to enable the survey of individual plots to be carried out expeditiously and smoothly.

The gazette notices he issued yesterday involved a total of 9,835 hectares (ha) of NCR land in the three areas surveyed. There were about 60,000 ha of NCR land from 10 areas in Pakan and Julau District surveyed under the perimeter survey initiative but yet to be gazetted Bumiputera Communal Reserves.

The areas were Uli Sungai Wak/Buku involving 6,790 ha belonging to 15 longhouses; 6,139 ha in Nanga Wak Pakan (15 longhouses) ; 2,303 ha along Jalan Wuak/Pakan (35 longhouses); 6,441 ha in Sungai Julau/Ulu Sungai Sugai (26 longhouses); 4,262 ha in Sungai Wak, Pakan (16 longhouses); 6,453 ha along Jalan Ulu Kota, Pakan (21 longhouses); 4,213 ha in Sungai Julau (eight longhouses), 9,062 ha in Ulu Pedanum (33 longhouses and 6,929 ha in Sungai Pakan.

He advised the NCR landowners to be patient as Land and Survey Department was still processing the gazette notices.

Read more: http://www.theborneopost.com/2012/08/14/gazetted-ncr-land-indefeasible-adenan/#ixzz23aBtJDfX

“Project IC” or “Projek M”

Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim suggested today that the government had deliberately refused to have the Sabah Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCI) probe those responsible for the alleged “citzenships-for-votes” deal with foreigners in order to protect certain personalities. The opposition leader said the entire RCI was flawed as its terms were lacking details and do not include identifying those responsible or recommending punishment on them. “These are major criminal acts, particularly when it involves corruption and cheating and falsifying documents... these are serious flaws, but of course, these are not part of the RCI’s terms of reference,” he told reporters after a function announcing the crossover of another senior Barisan Nasional (BN) here. Dr M "clearly nervous" The newly-established RCI on Sabah’s illegal immigrants has been tasked to investigate if foreigners in the state have been unlawfully awarded Malaysian ICs or citizenships and included in the electoral roll. But the panel’s terms, announced in Kota Kinabalu yesterday by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, do not include a probe to identify those involved in handing out citizenships unlawfully. The opposition have often laid blame on former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad for the state’s extraordinary spike in migrant population, claiming he had spearheaded “Project IC” or “Projek M”. The “Projek IC” initiative was purportedly kicked off in the early 1980s during Dr Mahathir’s tenure to give out Malaysian ICs to illegal immigrants in Sabah, in order to help the ruling BN stay in power. “Yes, it seems Dr Mahathir is clearly nervous about the RCI,” Anwar said here. “But they (BN) must have given their assurance that they will not pick at who is at fault, who are the people taking money or falsifying documents and why... so that means the entire RCI is just flawed,” he said. Just a gimmick Anwar added that Sabah voters were likely to have little regard for the RCI, noting the government’s years of refusal to set up the panel. He pointed out that the decades-old problem could not be so easily resolved within the six months deadline given to the panel to make its recommendations to the government. The PKR de facto leader suggested that the RCI was merely a political ploy, referring to its formation so close to the coming polls, and added that like the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) on electoral reforms, the panel was unlikely to solve Sabah’s problem with illegal immigrants. “This is just like a gimmick. They (the government) are not serious. I believe most Sabahans would not have any regard for this RCI because they have learned from the past on how their request to form the panel was not heeded,” he said. Najib’s announcement on the RCI’s reference terms yesterday comes just two weeks after the twin exits of two senior Sabah BN lawmakers – Tuaran MP Datuk Seri Wilfred Mojilip Bumburing and Beaufort MP Datuk Seri Lajim Ukin. Both men cited their dissatisfaction with the government’s delay on the RCI, which the Cabinet had already agreed to form on February 8 this year. In Sabah, the problem of illegal immigrants has been dominating every election since 1970 as the local natives believe that foreigners are to blame for the state’s economic, social and security problems. Some 27 per cent of Sabah’s 3.12 million population are said to be foreigners.