Re: bidayuh urged to be open to dev.

Posted by Nukidondblok on February 25, 2003 at 14:31:14:

Hello there Jabbers;
There are TWO issues here. Firstly, it is clearly about development!
Secondly, it is about the right to ownership of the land to which our fore father has bequethed to us.

For the first issue (i.e development), we sure all want development. Yep.
BUT, what may NOT be absolutely clear here is that when politician talk about development, we sometimes get rather confused. Why? Because, very often politician talk the talk that pleases the masses, especially the voters, so it is not surprising that their message may get twisted here and there, depending on own poltical pint of view, or even, whether we like or dislike a particular person.

What, I think is important is that when anybody talk about development, it MUST be clear that they are talking about total human development, which
encompassess, physical, mental, cultural and spiritual development. These four components MUST be part and parcel of bidayuh development. Physical development, alone is NO gurantee to community devlopment in the long run. Mental devopement cannot stand on its own, without physical, cultural and spiritual devlopment.

Neither can cultural and spiritual development, by itself or together form the TWO pillars of community devlopment.

All four pillars of human development MUST be there, after all has any Bidayuh try to build a baruk with just one "tiang". Yes, yes, can, BUT how stable and how big is it? OKay, consider building a two "tiang"
baruk. Ahem, I have never seen one in Lundu, Bau, Penrissen, Serian or even across the border. Nope, the baruk wouldn,t stand! Three "tiang" BARUK, yep possible, and stable too, but try and enlarge that three-"tiang" baruk, and lo and behold, you get trouble man. There is a limit to its size, before the supporting beam will break! So, now, what about the four "tiang" baruk. Sure can one! After all the huge pyramids in Egypt and South American are all built based on four corners.

So the same with development. It must be based on all four pillars of Islam, ooph salah lagi, I mean four pillars of debolotmen. BUT seriously, yep, talk about development, means talk about all four pillars of development. Nothing less.

Now as for the second issue of land title. Why you want land tittle eh? To sell the land? To use the land as bank collateral? To tanam jagung?
My simple answer is simply "that it belongs to us". To survey all the alnd and issue the land tittle is nothing really difficult. Forget about all the excuses of insufficient, financial allocation for the Pejabat Tanah,
etc. The bottom line is that there is lack of political will! Nothing more, nothing less! One of the problem with bidayuh land is the multiple and overlapping claim. This can be solved through various strategies. One is perhap to issue the whole kampung land initially as one big lot under trusteeship of the kampung.

How they sub-divide the land is an issue that can be tackle later. BUT first, the political leaders should ask for kampung boundary survey. The land survey MUST issue the land tittle as one big lot.Once all the kampung have land tittle, it is time for the Bidayuh interectuar to sit down and work out a feasible way of subdivided the lot. Yes, it would be difficult, but not impossible to do. To avoid problem with bidayuh squatting on untittled land, all the kampung build-up areas should be given a tittle. For example, the Balai Raya/Baruk, churches, rumah ruamh etc should have a land tittle. There shouldn,t be too much fight about this, I hope!
The rest of the farm land should be temporarily lump as one big lot.

The way, I see it, this arrangment will make is temporaily impossible for the kampung folk to sell the land, thus diluting the land bank with a flood of new land. This way the existing land with tittle do not have to depreciate in value.

You life's investment in buying houses in Kusing, should then be protected from a sudden depreciation in value, but increase in rateable fee to the council eh!

The way I see it, the Chinese, the Malays and others who do not have that privellege of claiming land under NCR, or who tend to have smaller pieces nearer the town, will not feel threaten, by a sudden increase in Bidayuh neuvo rich millionairre.

Thus the status quo is maintained. So that is the way I see it! You all sure have your own point of view, but, lets hear it at Britong.
As the new sayign goes "If it is not in Britong, it does not exist".
So apa masam eh?