Pemakai Menua and Pulau Galau (PMPG) issue remains a hot topic that should be handled properly as it involves a big section of our people, particularly the Dayak community. As I am not an expert or well endowed with knowledge in this domain, it better be left to the relevant authority to get it done in all the aspects required.
Our Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah, an old friend, has promised to come out with the definitions and implications ‘very soon’. So let’s be patient and wait. Native Customary Rights (NCR) to communal forests and territorial domains as well as cultivated land has been upheld by Malaysian courts in many cases dating back to time immemorial.
This consistent recognition by the court has been probably due to the pre-existence of NCR before the coming into force of any statue or legislation, particularly the ‘Rajah Order of 1921’. Since I am not an authority on land matter, let the NCR legislation matter rest here and leave the PMPG definition to the ‘experts’.
My intention is to share with readers related land problems pertaining to some areas in the state, especially in Saratok-Saribas region where Sarawak Land Consilidation and Rehabilitation Authority (SALCRA) has joined venture with more than 7,000 landowners to participate in oil palm plantating scheme involving about 240 longhouses and kampungs over a region covering 14,621 hectares of oil palm plantation. There are all together six estates within the region namely the Saratok Oil Palm Estate, Saribas Oil Palm Estate, Roban South Oil Palm Estate, Roban North Oil Palm Estate, Krian Division and Rimbas Division.
Hereby, I make specific reference to the Kedap, Melupa, Burui area under Saratok Oil Palm Estate – for readers’info, the present Saratok Oil Palm Mill at Sungai Entili in Melupa, is built over an area, of which the bigger part was my family former ‘temuda’ (cultivated land) that I can recall with vivid memory those times – at least twice over a span of ten years – when we had our hill paddy farm over the area, the latest probably just about two years before SALCRA came over.
My two brothers who were around during compensations’ payout, told me apai’s right and left hands – he needed to receive with two hands fully stretched – shivered tremendously upon receiving big bundles of fifty and one hundred ringgit notes. Their shares were on COD basis whereas mine came weeks later as I was out of the country for quite a while then. Troubles began when it came to the time of choosing lots for the planting of the oil palm seedlings.
This was when SALCRA registered the names of landowners who agreed to let them plant their land lots with oil palm seedlings, thereby agreeing to a joint-venture with them officially. There were quite of a number of overlapping claims,especially in the Burui-Assam area, including one involving my sister-in-law Sinong Langie, my brother Jon @ John Chandi’s wife.
The land was inherited by my brother from our maternal grandma Kejuang ak Meling but given to the wife as a token of love when our family gathered in the early 90s to ‘bebagi reta’ (divide inheritance items or heritage). Another claimant to the same piece of land in Burui, a tributary of the Melupa, was Lana @ Embuk also known as Apai Jalin from another longhouse Empalaie Ulu in Assam, also a Melupa tributary.
The case went to court under the case of Sindong vs Lana presided by Native Court Magistrate Walter Chambers Najod. The court decision was in favour of my sisterin- law, now 63. I was away overseas during that time. When I met Chambers in the early 2002 and reminisced on the various court cases he handled pertaining to SALCRA land disputes, he could recall that very case, not knowing that Sindong is my sister-in-law.
“It was good that I did not know the subjects or people would say I was prejudiced,”he said recalling that we became good friends after various card games’ encounters in Serian since 1986 when he was the District Officer there whereas I was serving in SMK Serian as deputy principal and later principal. In 1997/1998 my brother’s lots in Burui brought a good return of five figures after the initial harvest of FFB (fresh fruit bunches) of the oil palm.
There were a few other overlapping claims to land lots in the same area including a small number which remained unsettled until many years later. Some are never settled at all. These are the lots that are hitherto not planted with any oil palm plants and have become jungles in the midst of oil palm plantations. What a shame and what a waste. While other landowners are laughing all the way to the banks, these lots of disputed land are a good reminder to the people that disputes have become a hindrance to progress and development pertaining to the land lots.
These land lots, whose real owners are indeterminate, are a total waste and the issue does not augur well for the harmony and social cohesion of the Iban community. Most of these disputes are among family members, where brothers go against brothers and siblings drag siblings to court.
Such animosity has led to longhouses being broken into two or three, including in the vicinity of our own area. SALCRA officials have tried their best to help settle the matter and some have settled amicably except ones that are pending court decisions. Many have withdrawn their cases from courts and hug each other as settlement and hope to join the queue to the banks by this yearend or early next year.
These are the wiser few who realise that such disputes among siblings are just encumbrance to a better future. “There is no point for us to fight over small lots of land from our father who should have divided them when he was still around,” said a distant cousin who was involved in disputes with her siblings that were almost going to the court in the early days of SALCRA joint venture at Burui, Melupa. “Due to the existence of oil palm plantations and the Saratok Oil Palm Mill, scores of Melupa people from ten longhouses are gainfully employed,” she said when speaking to this writer many years ago. The present scenario further reinforces this truth.
After Burui-Assam plantation, SALCRA has also started clearing and planting oil palm at Ulu Kedap, Mapar and Babang areas under the Saratok Oil Palm Estate. A number of land lots at Ulu Kedap belong to our family with my two elder brothers having two each and one substantially big lot for me.
Now these former jungles have been turned into ‘mixed zone’ productive agricultural land lots. What was a three-hour journey on foot 50 years ago is now just a few minutes’ trip on motorbike or 4WD vehicle, thanks to the special trek and feeder gravel roads made by SALCRA as access for the vehicles used in harvesting and transportation of FFB to the main road and the mill. For my brother Jon, a fox hunting enthusiast, these treks are very handy for his night hunting trips, especially when the FFB are a good attraction to the nocturnal wild creatures.
Now going 70, he spends more bullets than necessary to down one flying fox. Thanks to SALCRA too, every year landowners from my longhouse and other longhouses in Melupa, Saratok have money from their dividends credited to their bank accounts.
“We are so grateful to SALCRA for developing our land that are now giving us good returns not to mention providing some of our people with steady jobs,” our longhouse chief Tuai Rumah Robert Lin Malina said when speaking to this writer during last Gawai Dayak celebration at Kedap, Saratok.
