NCR LANDS
KUCHING: Native customary rights (NCR) landowners are assured of their rights to the lands as long they have been surveyed and validated under the Sarawak Land Code.
Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Awang Tengah Ali Hasan said this was why the state government insisted on surveying native lands, first under Section 6 to determine its perimeters and eventually under Section 18 for issuance of individual land titles.
“This land issue is not new, but the problem is it is sometimes overly politicised,” he said during an interview at his office in Wisma Sumber Alam on Thursday.
He pointed out that the state government had been surveying native lands since the 1960’s.
However, he said that from the 1960’s until 2010, survey works were slow with only about 260,000 hectares of land surveyed during the period.
“If we average that, we only managed to survey 5,200 hectares per year. Therefore, the state government launched a new initiative for the survey of NCR land which is done in two stages,” he said.
He said that under this new initiative, the land’s perimeter would first be surveyed and then gazetted under Section 6 of SLC. The second stage involved survey of individual lots and issuance of land titles under Section 18 of the land code.
He emphasised that land surveys were done based on application by stakeholders and dialogues were also held with those involved.
Awang Tengah, who is also Urban Development and Resources Minister, disclosed that a total of 941,318 hectares or 2.326 million acres of land had been successfully surveyed from 2010 until now through the state government’s new NCR land survey initiative.
“The area gazetted so far is 753,456 hectares or 1.862 million acres,” he said.
He said the focus now was on individual lot surveys. Thus far, 42,962 hectares or 34,686 individual lots of surveyed NCR land have been issued land titles.
“So just imagine that in ten years, we have managed to survey such a vast area with this new land survey initiative,” he said.
