KUCHING, Oct 27: The next Sarawak government must reform the State’s Land Code to protect Indigenous communities’ customary land rights, including ancestral lands that may fall outside the current recognition framework, says the Committee on Native Customary Lands and Lepu’un of Hulu Balui.
In a statement issued by it secretary Denis Hang Bilang on Oct 26, the committee called on all candidates contesting the upcoming State election to commit to surveying and gazetting all Native Customary Lands without discrimination, arguing that the existing legal framework continues to reflect British colonial-era policies.
The committee also touched on the results of years of land surveying despite millions of ringgit being spent, asking which communities’ lands had actually been surveyed and gazetted.
