Villagers protest against alleged encroachment
SIPITANG: About 100 residents from Kampung Solob set up a blockade in protest against a logging company for allegedly encroaching on their native customary right lands (NCR) in three villages.
The three villages involved and identified as NCR areas are Kampung Ondop, Pakoton and Pekiak, which they claimed have been inhabited by them since 1963.
The chairman of the action committee for the three villages, Padan Yuak, 40, said that before the action was taken, they had held talks first with the Sipitang district officer and Sipitang forestry officer and lodged a police report on April 4 because they wanted their rights to be heard by the party encroaching on the NCR area.
“We do things like this so that the relevant parties, particularly the Sabah Forestry Department, Sabah Forest Industries Sdn Bhd and the logging company concerned would hopefully come to discuss this matter with us.
“We are fed up with their promises to sit down, reaching tens of years, but never did,” he claimed.
Padan said that according a letter from the Beaufort District Surveyor ref: LSB: 4/8/17 Vol. 2 (93) dated January 8, 1994 in which the letter stated: “The area will be removed from SFI (and) will become a village area,” showed that Kampung Solob and its vicinity as listed in bil.03 as L30, L31, L33 and L32 covering an area of 1,120 hectares had been approved as a village.
A resident, Ngilo Baru, 83, claimed that the gazetting of the Forest Reserve and SFI only existed after the NCR existed in the 1930s, where his ancestors had lived at Kampung Ondop (location map L31).
Meanwhile, Kampung Solob Village Development and Security Committee (JKKK) chairman Ansibul Anduus supported the actions taken by the action body as they (residents) have the right to make a claim and should be heard by the parties concern..
“It’s not about taking the opportunity to get a logging area. The area has been logged several times by logging companies without control before a road was built between Sipitang and Tenom,” he said.