Mar 18, 2010

‘Review land proposal’

PUTRAJAYA: The orang asli community wants the Government to review the proposal to award heads of households with just 2ha of land for cultivation, saying this is insufficient.

Peninsular Malaysia Orang Asli Association president Majid Suhut said most orang asli had large families and problems would arise when the land had to be split among the children later.

He said the matter had been raised with Rural and Regional Development Minister Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal, who promised to review proposed amendments to the Orang Asli Act 1954 before they are tabled in Parliament in June.

“We also want the Government to award titles to those who have worked hard to cultivate any area of land.

“They deserve the title, irrespective of how big the land is,” he added.

Majid was speaking to reporters after a dialogue between the minister and some 2,000 representatives of the orang asli community yesterday.

He said another issue the community wanted the Government to “seriously look into” was representation in the Dewan Negara, which he claimed was not done according to the Constitution.

After the dialogue, Majid and the representatives went to the Prime Minister’s office to submit a memorandum to Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.

The memorandum was handed over to the Prime Minister’s special functions officer Datuk Ghazali Ibrahim.