Perak clearing land title backlog
(The Star) – THE Pakatan Rakyat government has cleared about 14,000 of the 16,000 applications for land titles since taking control of Perak in March.
Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Mohammad Nizar Jamaluddin said the state executive council met every Wednesday from 9am to 7pm to clear the backlog.
He said this during a dialogue with the people in conjunction with Hulu Perak Land Office’s Clients’ Day in Gerik on Tuesday.
On a villager’s suggestion that the state government should reduce the quit rent in view of the current reduced rubber and oil palm prices so as to encourage more people to pay up their quit rent, Nizar said this could not be entertained as the National Land Code only allowed a review every 10 years.
He said the villagers would not have a hard time settling their quit rent had they done so when the prices of rubber and oil palm were good.
Instead, some villagers were known to have used the money they gained from the previously higher rubber and oil palm prices to renovate their houses, he said.
Hulu Perak district officer Datuk Abdul Karim Osman told the group that up to December 15, RM7.6mil in quit rent had been collected, exceeding the RM7.4mil collection target.
Abdul Karim said quit rent arrears stood at about RM300,000 and suggested that pay-ment defaulters start paying up in installments.
A cattle rearer, who only identified herself as Kak Ton, lamented that her animals had no grazing ground, claiming that the State Agriculture Development Corporation (SADC) had taken over such a site at her village in Tawai, purportedly to build a bamboo-processing factory.
Nizar said since he also headed the SADC, the latter would have to find another site for the proposed factory.
Since the site had been gazetted as a grazing ground, it should remain so and Kak Ton could allow her animals to graze at the site, he said, drawing instant applause from the crowd.
Responding to another query that a workshop run by the Community Development Department had occupied a community hall in Lenggong, Nizar said the district office would relocate it to an adjacent building.
At the gathering, Nizar also handed over more than 40 land titles of which 12 comprised permanent new village land titles.
