Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS) will provide the financial allocation for the perimeter survey of Native Customary Rights (NCR) Land next year.
Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Awang Tengah Ali Hasan said this was because there was no specific allocation approved by the federal government for the purpose.
Tengah, who is also Urban Development and Natural Resources Second Minister, said the state government always recognized the people’s rights to their land.
“In fact, the surveying of native customary land (NCR) has been implemented since the 1960s through the Operation Solutions while the Traditional Village Measurement Programme has been implemented since the beginning of 2000,” he said in his winding up speech yesterday.
Tengah explained that state government had always wanted accelerate survey of NCR land via perimeter survey but with financial allocations from the federal government.
He said the previous federal government recognised the need to survey NCR land and had allocated funds for the purpose although they knew the matter came under the state’s purview.
“Unfortunately, in the Federal Budget 2019 presented recently, it is not specifically stated the provisions for continuing the programme. We do not know whether the federal government will continue to provide financing or not,” Tengah said.
Tengah called on the federal government under Pakatan Harapan to continue to allocate funds for the initiative.
According to him, as of last month, perimeter survey was successfully carried out on 870,265 hectares (2,150,425 acres) in total.
“Of the total, 687,258ha (1,698,215 acres) throughout the state of have been gazetted,” Tengah added.
“To date, 22,983 individual lots have been successfully surveyed involving 28,807ha (71,182 acres) and these will be issued with land titles under Section 18 of the State Land Code,” he said.
