KUCHING, Sept 17: The Dayak National Convention concluded today with resolutions gathered from some 2,000 members at the Borneo Convention Centre Kuching (BCCK) here.
Dayak Round Table (DRT) advisor Dr Dusit Jaul revealed that the resolutions for the state government are as follows:
— To address the issues of logistics and marketing in order to create an efficient supply chain from grower to market outside Sarawak.
— To conduct a door-to-door Household Income Survey in parallel with a similar programme carried out by the federal government to provide a more accurate picture of household income by ethnic groups and to resolve hardcore poverty. Database on rural communities is important for planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
— To provide relief to farming communities when the market price is low.
— To promote new sources of growth, for example by encouraging rural communities to participate in the flower industry, ecotourism, creative heritage and herbal industries.
— State government to make available heavy machinery for low-cost rental in commercial agriculture undertaken by the rural communities.
For the federal government, the resolutions are as follows:
— To expand to all districts the role and functions of federal agencies involved in uplifting the socio-economic status of rural communities by means of Mara, Tekun, AIM, etc. A task force with Dayak representation must be set up to monitor the effectiveness of these agencies in helping the rural communities.
— Tax exemption for agricultural inputs.
— To build a Borneo supermarket complex in the Klang Valley, Johor and Penang for Sarawak products.
The resolutions for customary land are as follows:
— For the state government to legally recognise ‘Pemakai Menoa’ or its equivalent in other native customs based on the ‘Adat Asal’ to ensure the security of tenure for Native Customary Rights (NCR) land.
— All ‘Pemakai Menoa’ that have been taken or encroached upon must be returned to the respective affected native communities with immediate effect.
— The state government must be transparent by openly providing financial statements with regards to all NCR land developed either by joint venture or private basis. Upon expiry of the provisional leases, the land must be reverted to the original landowners.
In politics, the resolutions are as follows:
— To request the federal government to establish a National Indigenous People Development Policy. Henceforth, the federal government to undertake immediate steps to set up an office in the Prime Minister’s Department to be called Indigenous People’s Interests Section. This office is to be headed and staffed by the indigenous people.
— To strongly urge the federal government to do away with the term Bumiputera, instead just refer to the various ethnic groups by their respective race like Malay, Dayaks and Kadazandusun.
— To urge the government to look into the legal mechanism to facilitate the implementation of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) principle, to which Malaysia is a signatory to, be it at the federal or state level.
— To introduce anti-discriminatory law and enforce Article 39 of the Sarawak Constitution, which is reservation of quotas in respect of public service and educational facilities for natives. — DayakDaily
