KUCHING: Disputes between landowners and lack of manpower are among the main challenges faced by the Land and Survey Department in implementing the new native customary rights (NCR) land initiative.

According to land administrative officer Emmy Zurina Omar, the new initiative involved two stages of surveying and gazetting NCR land.

“The first stage is en-bloc perimeter survey to determine the boundaries of NCR land, after which it will be gazetted as Native Communal Reserve under Section 6 of the Sarawak Land Code.

“In the second stage, individual surveys will be carried out in gazetted areas where there is no dispute between the landowners on their individual land boundaries. The surveyed lots will then be issued with individual titles under Section 18 of the Land Code,” she said.

Speaking at a media dialogue here yesterday, she said the Land and Survey Department would not be able to carry out survey works if there were disputes between NCR landowners or communities over the land.

“In addition, we face a shortage of manpower to carry out NCR land survey as the department also has other survey work to do, particularly for projects under various National Key Result Areas (NKRAs),” she said.

Emmy also said some landowners wanted their land to be individually surveyed right away without the perimeter survey being carried out first.

However, she said this could not be done because there were approximately 1.5 million ha of NCR land in the state.

“If we were to do individual surveys right away, I think we will never get the job done. We need to carry out the perimeter survey first to delineate NCR land from other land such as state land,” she said.

Emmy said challenges also arose from NCR landowners claiming a large area than what was indicated in the department’s records, NCR land overlapping with areas issued with provisional leases and NCR land involved in court cases.

She said the onus to prove NCR lay with the claimants.

“The state government will not entertain NCR claims if there is no concrete proof to support the claims, if there is dispute among the claimants, or if the NCR is obtained through ways that do not Comply with customary laws,” she added.

(Source:The Star, 7 Oktober 2012)