Thursday, July 15, 2010

Give Back the Lands that belong to the People


When it comes to land problem in Sarawak, strange things had happened and unless something is done fast, a lot of people would be kicked out of their own homes. That is why the Pakatan Rakyat calls for a change of government, for the betterment of everyone.


Even when a retired excavator operator has his only piece of land where he had been living for over 60 years, the government has been making life terrible for him and his family of six.


Liew Chin Koo, 65 inherited the parcel of land that was bought through his mother’s blood and sweat money, is now living in a limbo. He is not sure when he would be kicked out of his own home.


Before 1993 when Liew’s land lease expired, his effort to renew it failed. The Land and Survey let him squatted in his own land until 1998, while giving him a Temporary Occupation License (TOL).


After three years and efforts made to go to the Land and Survey to renew his land, he was told to wait. After waiting until this June, his daughter went to the Land and Survey, and was told that they had lost all the family’s land data.


Liew has no choice but to turn to the media to ask for an appeal. The Land and Survey has the cheek to reply to me, through the media, insinuating that I was lying and that Liew has three parcels of land.


I did a search, and public records clearly indicate that Liew’ does not own three parcels of land. Lot 285 Lundu Town District is the only land he used to own. Liew is still waiting for the Land and Survey to give him the two other parcels as claimed by them. I am asking Land and Survey not to talk too much or make allegation against me when they were the ones not doing their homework.


The Land and Survey even suggested that Liew had gone to their office on March 16 this year to check on his land title. How can he be in Land and Survey when he was still in Lundu. What a blatant lie. And let the people judge who is the real liar here.


I am helping Liew to re-apply for the land renewal since the Land and Survey said they did not have any background information. If the Land and Survey claimed that they are a caring government, they should be kind to automatically renew all lands. They should amend the Section 26 of the Land Code to put people out of their misery instead of taking the lands they fancy. Why were so many land owners so unhappy, people like Liew and those at Bako area.


Using these unfair laws against land owners, all lands shall revert to the state upon expiry of lease term and no compensation shall be paid to the land owners. This practice need to be stopped immediately and the people’s land bought with their sweat and blood or inherited by their parents should be kept by the rightful owner, not to be taken and sold to their cronies.


It is high time the Barisan Nasional State Government amends the SarawakLand Code to prevent them from further abusing the people and using the unfair law to kick land owners out without compensating them.


Change the Land code before people changed the government.

1 comment:

FirstFruits said...

In The Borneo Post dated 24/12/01 front page, Masing brandded NCR land critics as ignorant and arrogant. He said that the government did not take NCR lands if the owners did not agree in response to a letter written to the PM, cc to CM & himself by one Robert E Rutkowski who alleged that the Penans were the main victims of land grabbing.

Masing added that under the law, the Penans did not own much land under the NCR land status prior to 1958 as most of them were still nomadic and in Mulu National Park, they were allowed to hunt for animals, gather jungle produce and fish.

Masing seems to be contradicitng himself

In BA JAWI: The Penan community is suing the Sarawak government and timber giant Samling Plywood for logging in 15,000 hectares of the government approved Penan Peace Park bordering Indonesia.

The natives’ NCR lands in Sebangan,
in Bijat land district, Sungai Tisak and in other places taken FREE by the white rajah against their will without compensation? He then sold these NCR lands, maing millions of RM to "China man" logging companies for extracting timber and planting oil palm while the natives were not paid a cent and became destitute.

All NCR lands in Sarawak are robbed by BN and cronies…..nobody was consulted; the so-called developments (for the thief and cronies) were forced on the people. Example Pusaka KTS Oil palm in Baram…the people are against the development of the oil palm but still the govt carried it out! The only people who agreed with the project..were the Lihan Joker cronies….

Baram Hyrdo….it will displace thousand of people in Baram
and majority of Kenyah opposed
it. Lihan cronies..the Kayans signed the MoU but they are not affected and still insist on
going ahead. All these are for
the benefit of BN cronies…