State Govt: FMUs confer community rights

KOTA KINABALU, April 29, 2011: At the Sabah Legislative Assembly, Thursday, 28 April, 2011 - In a belated recognition of native villages in forest reserves, the State Government has finally acknowledged that FMUs do confer community rights on villages within the FMUs, Chief Minister Datuk Musa Aman conceded that the State Government is studying all village settlements in forest reserves.

At the moment, the status quo of these settlements would be maintained provided there is no expansion activities in the area concerned, he said.

For original villages that had been included in the Forest Management Unit (FMU) concession areas, he said a solution was made by creating a Community Compartment where the development of this compartment would take into account participation of the community there.

The State Government would assist original settlers in Forest Reserves who volunteered to move out to the resettlement areas outside the reserves, such as those in Salarom Taka, Sapulut and Nabawan, he said.

In this respect, among the issues that the Forestry Department would be looking at is to identify the time the area was occupied whether before it was gazetted as forest reserve and whether the people there are the indigenous community.

Apart from that, there was also problem of encroachers from other districts who take away possession of lands occupied by the indigenous community of a particular area.