By Adele James
KUCHING, July 16, 2017 - Parti Rakyat Sarawak (PRS) said
it wants perimeter survey on native customary rights (NCR) lands to be
conducted around blocks of longhouses instead of from longhouse to longhouse as
is the practice, its president Tan Sri Dr James Masing said today.
PRS president Tan Sri Dr James Masing (seated, third from right) speaking
to reporters after chairing the party supreme council meeting.
He said conducting the perimeter survey around blocks of
longhouses will expedite the survey process on NCR land.
He said PRS, being a Dayak-based party, is very concerned
at the slow speed in conducting the perimeter survey, although a sum of RM36
million has been allocated for 2017.
He said many requests from the NCR landowners and the
rural assemblymen to the state government have not been met due to the slowness
in the survey process.
"We suggest that instead of carrying out the survey
from longhouse to another longhouse, it should be done around blocks of
longhouses so that there is a separation between the state land and NCR land,"
he told reporters after chairing the party's supreme council meeting here.
He said conducting perimeter survey around blocks of
longhouses not only expedite the survey process, but also solve the boundary
disputes between NCR land and state land.
"If there are disputes among longhouses over their NCR land boundary
after perimeter survey around blocks of longhouses have been carried out, then
let them settle the problems themselves," he said.
Masing, who is also the Deputy Chief Minister, said what
is important is that demarcation between NCR land and state land must be
settled first.
"In some areas, they have been very slow because I was
told some of the money has been spent when conducting the perimeter survey under
section 18 of the Sarawak Land Code, which is time consuming and caused a lot
of money," he said.
He said top priority is to demarcate what is NCR land and
what is state land.
"So we hope that the money given by the federal
government be used expediently and quickly,"
he said.
he said.
On the RM50 million loans from the federal government for
building new longhouses, Masing said the reimbursement is rather slow.
"We suggest that the authority concerned handled it
fast because there are a lot of longhouses that need to be built," he
said, adding under the longhouse loan scheme, a family is entitled to a maximum
of RM50,000 interest free loan.
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