Bill to define pemakai menoa and pulau galau likely to be tabled in November, says Uggah

By Simon Peter

KUCHING, June 22, 2017 - A Bill to define pemakai menoa (territorial domain) and communal forest reserves (pulau galau) as native customary rights land in the Sarawak Land Code is expected to be tabled in the November session of the Sarawak state assembly.

Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas, who is also the Minister of Modernisation of Agriculture, Native Land and Regional Development

"A group consisting of experts on the Dayak Adats and Customs as well as lawyers specialising on NCR land have been holding a series of meetings to work out on the definitions of pemakai menoa and pulau galau," Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas said today.

He said he is confident that the group could complete drafting the definitions on the terms pemakai menoa and pulau galau.

"The Bill to amend the Sarawak Land Code on NCR land will be tabled this year, not next year," he said when commenting on a recent call by a coalition of nine Dayak non-governmental organisations (NGOs)  for the state government to issue directive to the  Attorney-General to put on hold all NCR land cases pending before the court while waiting for the Sarawak Land Code to be amended.

The coalition spokesman Dr Dusit Jaul said the moratorium would be to calm down the situation on the ground which was worsening after the High Court had discharged and acquitted the alleged mastermind behind the murder of NCR land activist Bill Kayong earlier this month.

"The promise made by the government that the land code involving NCR land would be amended before the end of this year had not been able to calm down the situation," he had told a press conference.

According to Dusit, there were about 300 pending cases before the High Court and Court of Appeals throughout Sarawak as of end of last year.

Dusit, who is also the president of the Sarawak Dayak Graduates Association, had said many of these cases had been pending for years.

"In view of what is still happening, the coalition demands an urgent and comprehensive response and solution from the government," he said.

He said the coalition feared that the native landowners might lose their land in the manner Tuai Sandah and other landowners lost their pemakai menoa and pulau galau after the Federal Court had reversed the judgment of the High Court.

Dusit believed that all pending cases before the High Court and CoA would  follow the decision in the Tuai Sandah case as they were bound by the apex court's ruling.

"If that happens, then the government's efforts to resolve the NCR landowners' problems have no meaning at all," Dusit said, urging the state government to recognise pemakai menoa and pulau galau as NCR land as the failure to do so would end up causing more problems between the natives and  authorities.

"The custom of pemakai menoa and pulau galau is a practice not only among the Iban, but also the practice of the Bidayuh, Orang Ulu and Malay communities, although they call it under different names," he said.

The nine NGOs are Sarawak Dayak Iban Assocation, Sarawak Dayak Graduates Association, Dayak National Congress, Pesatuan Dayak Sarawak, Gempuru Besai Kristian Jako Iban Malaysia, Dayak Rights Action Force, Serian Iban Remun Association, Sarawak Society for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Dayak Think-Tank Group.