Nine villages in Kinabatangan forest reserve gazetted

Nine villages in the Kinabatangan forest reserve area have been gazetted, said Sabah Chief Minister Mohd Shafie Apdal today.

He explained the villages were occupied by the local community for decades who had long applied for their villages to be gazetted.

"We (the state government) recognise the area as settlement villages.

"We have been doing this (getting villages gazetted) since last year in line with our goal to fulfil the aspirations of the people in the state," Shafie said, adding that the villages are located in the Segama and Trusan Kinabatangan areas.

He was speaking to reporters after handing out land titles to 240 landowners during a ceremony today.

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 99 land titles were given 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.

- Bernama