By Amanda L
KUCHING, May 26: Overlapping tribal claims and a pattern of claimant absenteeism have emerged as key challenges slowing the legal formalisation of Native Customary Rights (NCR) land in Sarawak, says Deputy Premier Datuk Amar Awang Tengah Ali Hasan.
While the State continues to provide premium-free and tax-exempt land titles under Section 18 of the Sarawak Land Code, officials are urging rural communities to resolve boundary disputes internally and ensure attendance at scheduled survey sessions.
“Failure by claimants to be present during field appointments often disrupts operations, effectively halting the deployment and coordination of multi-agency mapping teams tasked with verifying land boundaries,” he said.
He said this at the presentation ceremony for Section 6 Native Customary Rights (NCR) land gazettes and Section 18 land titles for the Mambong constituency today, where he highlighted the issue, noting that the surveying process relies heavily on community participation and accurate identification of traditional boundaries.
Without this local verification, he said recurring boundary disputes between neighboring families often bring field operations to a sudden standstill.
“Compounding these legal gridlocks is the persistent issue of logistical absenteeism, where some claimants fail to show up for field assessments despite receiving repeated formal notices,” he explained.
Awang Tengah said such situations complicate efforts to determine accurate boundaries and slow down the overall implementation of NCR land surveying and registration.
To break this bottleneck, he stressed that proactive intervention from village chiefs and community leaders is now essential, as local leadership holds the definitive traditional knowledge needed to settle disputes before survey teams arrive. — DayakDaily
