PBS targets Yong in new attack over land issue

Parti Bersatu Sabah says the creation of the Forest Management Unit (FMU) by Yong was a form of land abuse.

KOTA KINABALU: In its unabated attack on Yong Teck Lee, Parti Bersatu Sabah this time is accusing the SAPP president and former chief minister of mismanagement of state land during his tenure.

PBS vice president, Herbet Timbon Lagadan said the creation of the Forest Management Unit (FMU) by Yong was a form of land abuse.

“Yong cannot simply deny there was huge areas of customary land and few villages have been trapped within the FMU concession areas,” he said, adding that many issues arising on the matter today could be due to haphazard issuance of land titles which were approved to outsiders and denying land ownership to locals.

Yong said in a statement last Sunday that SAPP will continue to defend the people especially those affected by land grabbing and whose native customary rights have been robbed if the party forms the next government .

Saying that land grabbing cases are happening in Kinabatangan, Tawau, Kudat, Tenom, and Lahad Datu, Yong also cited that the state government under his two-year tenure had succeeded in issuing 44,000 land titles.

Earlier this month, SAPP supreme council member, Peter Marajin had said that “the rights and privileges of the natives under the existing laws and regulations, including customary law, are not affected or limited in any respect under this (FMU) Agreement.

“The licensee shall recognise such rights and privileges including, without limitation to those relating to entry into the licensed area to collect certain wood species and exploit Minor Forest Produce (as allowed and defined in the Forest Enactment 1968 and Forest Rules 1969) for its own personal use and not for business purposes.”

Marajin explained that it was the present state government’s non-fulfillment of the Sustainable Forest Management Licence Agreements (SFMLA) that has jeopardized the natives living in the FMU area.

But these claims and assurances by SAPP have not stopped PBS, as a Barisan Nasional component member, from pointing its fingers to Yong.

PBS said: “It is very irresponsible for Yong to put the blame on the BN government now when he was the one who created the FMU which had resulted in many locals losing the NCR (native customary rights to land).”

“Have Sabahans forgotten how Yong, being the Chief Minister then, had given 10 companies to own one million hectares of Sabah land for a period of 100 years?” Lagadan asked.

“I find it ironic that Yong is trying to portray himself as the saviour of Sabahans to own land through his creation of the FMU.”