Sabah sets aside interior land for native communities

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KOTA KINABALU: Sabah is setting aside thousands of hectares of land in its interior for its native communities.

State Land and Survey Department director Datuk Osman Jamal said, to start with, some 12,000ha of land would be earmarked for this purpose.

“This is among the examples of how the state’s land policies and laws are aimed at protecting members of Sabah’s ethnic communities,” he said.

Osman had earlier handed over the department’s approval letter to the Federation of Hainanese Associations of Sabah and Labuan chairman John Lim for a piece of land in the northern Kudat district for a Mazu statue and temple project.

He said the department was also identifying land near selected villages that would be set aside and offered to the villagers to be developed for agriculture.

“What this means is that the rural folk will not see the land behind their kitchens given to someone else,” Osman said.

He said the scheme had been initiated in the interior Nabawan district, involving an area of some 3,200ha, to benefit 20 kampung.

Osman said similar schemes would also be carried out in other districts with high poverty levels, including Kinabatangan, Tongod and Beluran.

He said the department was trying its best to clear up a backlog of land applications that had now accumulated to more than 265,000.

“We are getting some 40,000 applications per year and 70% of these involve land with native titles,” Osman said, adding that the department could only process 16,000 applications a year.