KINABATANGAN, Aug 11 (NNN-BERNAMA) — Nine villages in the Kinabatangan forest reserve area have been gazetted, Sabah Chief Minister Datuk Seri Mohd Shafie Apdal said today.
He explained that the villages had been occupied by the local community for decades and had long applied for these villages to be gazetted.
“We (the state government) recognise the area as settlement villages.
“We have been doing this (getting the villages gazetted) since last year in line with our goal to fulfil the aspirations of the people in the state,” he told reporters after handing out land titles to 240 landowners, here, today.
According to Mohd Shafie, the villages are located in the Segama and Trusan Kinabatangan areas.
On today’s ceremony, he said the land titles handed out involved 36 villages with a total land area of 478.5 hectares.
Sabah Land and Survey Department director, Bernard Liew Chau Min said of the land titles, 99 were through the Sabah Native Land Services programme (PANTAS) in seven villages in the Bukit Garam area and three along Jalan Sandakan-Lahad Datu.
“Clearly, PANTAS is a programme to address the problems of native customary rights (NCR) land claims faced by the indigenous community for so long.
“Meanwhile, there are another 141 land titles issued that are the result of ordinary land applications approved under Part IV of the Sabah Land Ordinance,” he said.
Liew also said that 159 conditional land applications for native titles in Kinabatangan were in the surveying stage and his department expected the land titles to be issued for the plots by the middle of next year.
— NNN-BERNAMA