FIVE WAYS NATIVES CAN ACQUIRE LAND

KOTA KINABALU: MUSA said there are five methods through which natives could apply for land and for the State to protect and preserve native land ownership as well as the NCR.

The first method was to give ownership to natives through land application approval and up to December 2011, the State Government through the Land and Survey Department had registered 348,652 land titles.

Of these, 190,452 were Native Title (NT) lands, which was 55 per cent from the total land titles registered in Sabah. So far a total of 1,970,961 hectares had been issued with titled and of which 487,680 were NT land, representing 24.7 per cent of the total land acreage that had been registered in Sabah.

In the bid to boost the number and acreage of NT land awarded to natives, he said the State Government had expedited the approval process and land surveying applications as well as issuance of the land titles.

In this respect, a total of 17,501 land applications had been processed in 2011 and 6,872 of which 6,218 were NT lands endorsed for approval through the respective district Land Utilisation Committees (LUC).

Up to August this year, 35,350 land applications had been processed out of which 10,540 comprising 9,922 NT lands had been endorsed for approval by the district LUC.

Musa said continuous efforts would be taken until all the land application backlog totalling 302,189 have been cleared in the interest of the natives.

Among the steps taken by the Department to expedite the application processes was the policy requiring only comments from the district surveyor on the status of the applied land before it could be brought to the district LUC meeting.

Another was requiring personnel of the Land and Survey Department to do daily overtime from 5pm to 7pm and from 8am to 5pm during the weekends as well as increasing the frequency of the district LUC meetings.

Besides, he said, the department had also fully implemented the e-Kadester system in January 2011 to speed up the surveying of approved NT lands.

As a comparison, up to Dec 2011, a total of 4,070 NT land application lots had been surveyed while only 2,931 were completed in 2010 using the conventional method.

- The second method for natives to acquire land was through the gazettement of State Land as Natives Reserve under Section 78 of the Sabah Land Ordinance.

He said up to Dec 2011, a total of 53,190.857 hectares had been gazetted for native use such as village and grazing fields.

- The third method was through Communal Land Title under the amended Section 76 of the Sabah Land Ordinance that was gazetted on Dec. 10, 2009.

Issuance of the Communal Land Title was aimed at protecting the interest of natives on State Land in the vicinity of native village settlement, expediting the issuance of land title typed Native Title/Field Register to natives enbloc, resolving the NCR claim issues, resolving overlapping land application and ensuring natives do not easily sell off their land, Up to December last year, Musa said seven Communal Land Titles had been issued totaling 12,777.14 hectares for 2,661 beneficiaries in three districts.

He said another 52 Communal Title for 23,046.07 hectares of land would be issued to 5,373 beneficiaries in seven districts.

According to him, the Communal Title could be sub-divided into individual lots should the beneficiaries want to do so and once the individual lots have been fully developed the individual land title would be issued.

The State Government was planning to issue communal grants in Kota Marudu (17,000 acres), Pitas (10,000 acres), Tongod (15,000 acres), Semporna - Mount Pock Forest Reserves and Tanjung Nagas (5,177.12 acres).

He said the State Government had also on April 2010 de-gazetted 24,563 hectares from the Sook Plain Forest Reserves and Mandalom through a land swap with State land for the issuance of several Communal Titles.

- The fourth method was under Section 9 (1) of the Sabah Land Ordinance, which was to give ownership of the land to a government agency for agricultural development through a smart partnership with in-situ natives.

The objectives of the move were also to assist in the poverty eradication effort, provide job and business opportunities and improve the rural folk prosperity.

Up to December last year 36,486.43 had and are still being developed for agriculture under this method.

Ownership of the whole area would be transferred to the in-situ natives once the government agency concerned get back the development cost as stipulated in the signed joint-venture agreement.

"It is hoped that people in the rural areas would understand the noble intention of the government to help them through the relevant agencies and not misunderstand the move as grabbing their land," he said.

Among the government agencies involved were the Sabah Land Development Board, Sabah Rubber Industry Board, Borneo Samudera Sdn Bhd and Felcra.

- The fifth method through which land is given to natives was through the enforcement of Section 9 (1) of the Sabah Land Ordinance, which required native equity ownership for 1,000 acres awarded to a company.

Under the section, companies that had been given approval for land above 1,000 acres for agriculture development would be imposed with a special condition, that is, to make it mandatory for them to transfer 30 per cent or 49 per cent (based on the clause in the land title) to natives or government agencies approved by the State Natural Resources Office five years after the land is fully developed according to its agriculture development plan, he said.

Up to December 2011, 16 Country Lease (CL) titles comprising 37,514.86 hectares had the 49 per cent clause while another 123 CL titles comprising 240,075.11 hectares were imposed with the 30 per cent clause.

Through this agreement, the total equity ownership that must be transferred to the natives or government agencies amounted to 277,588.97 hectares.

Through these five methods, Musa said the size of land available for natives were 890,626.47 hectares or 45 per cent of the State land that had been issued with titles in Sabah, which is bigger than the size of Selangor Darul Ehsan (795,600 hectares).

Earlier, he said the State Government had also set up the Mobile Native Unit or Pantas not only to address current issues such as NCR but also provide land-related services to the rural folk.

Among the duties of Pantas were to create awareness on the policies, procedures and regulations of land-related matters, particularly on NCR claims; receiving and recording NCR claims as well as making site inspections; accepting land usage conversion application, updating of land owners address and collection of land revenue.

"This clearly shows the seriousness of the State Government in improving the land ownership of Sabah natives. This noble effort is continuing from time to time with better planning so that Sabah natives could enjoy the true meaning of land ownership," he said.

Musa said the State Government was always open to views and constructive criticisms in enhancing the efficacy of the delivery system with the view to boost preservation and protection of the NCR from time to time.