Communal ownership of farmland

Nabawan - In May 2010 the Chief Minister handed Sabah's first communal title to 1,400 heads of families in Kampung Salarom Taka of Nabawan comprising some 5,000 villagers. The title confers a collective ownership of 3,650 hectares (9,000 acres) of agricultural land to the villagers at a Juara Rakyat ceremony. The district officer of Nabawan Bubudan Majalu received it on the villagers' behalf.

Communal ownership of land is a permutation of the Agropolitan and Mesej schemes as part of the government’s poverty eradication measures. Under this arrangement, government agencies such as the Sabah Land Development Board (SLDB), the Rubber Fund Board help the villagers to grow plantation crops such as oil palms and rubber on the communal land, and the villagers are paid wages by these agencies for their labour on the plantation at the initial stage. In due course the villagers derive income from the proceeds of what the land produces. Based on what Datuk Musa calls a win-win formula, the 3,650 hectares of oil palms will yield about RM46 million from sales of fresh fruit bunches (FFB) at current prices. If the current variables stay this would translate to a monthly income of about RM2,716 for each of the 1,400 households. The Sabah government is giving about 12,000 hectares to rural natives for such projects under joint-land ownership, which is a built-in guarantee that none of them could sell the land for instant cash, a temptation that many rural land owners had found irresistible. With all the attention given to the efforts to combat poverty Datuk Musa was hopeful that the state government, with full support from the federal government, would be able to surmount hardcore poverty by the end of 2010. But he stressed that it is the people’s determination to help themselves that would win the day in the fight against poverty, not the cash handouts or more projects that the government must think up endlessly to end poverty. Besides providing monetary assistance and government assisted economic activities, he particularly stressed capacity building among the hardcore poor through improving access to skills training opportunities, motivating and building self-confidence and inculcating positive values and better work ethics, especially among the young in the villages. All that will be part of the inputs into the state’s socio-economic future in the ETP scheme of things.