FORTY-FIVE Malay landowners claim they were “cheated” in a deal on their 404ha customary communal land and plan to lodge a report with the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC).

The landowners, from Sarawak’s Simunjan district – about 90km from Kuching – want MACC to investigate a state assistant minister for allegedly collaborating with a plantation company to steal” their land.

Dominique Ng, the landowners’ legal counsel, and Hapeni Fadil, chairman of Kampung Lubok Bunting land customary rights action committee, said the landowners were duped by the “encouragement and recommendation” of the assistant minister in 2000 to go into a 70-30 joint venture with the Kuching-based company to develop their land into an oil palm plantation.

He said they villagers will lodge a report with MACC on Monday.

The land was officially reserved for their village extension.

“They (the villagers) were actually tricked into it,” Ng said.

To the villagers, “it sounded good”.

“And anyway, who dare to oppose an assistant minister?” said Ng.

After the assistant minister made the recommendation in a letter dated January 10, 2000, community leader Chik Sulung began communicating with the company and arranged for the JV.

Ng, a former assemblyman for Padungan, said Chik was illiterate and all correspondence between the company and the landowners were drafted by company executives.

He said share certificates were finally issued to the 45 landowners.

“They were even receiving ang pow – which started with RM50, and the amount gradually increased to RM400 last year – before every Raya.

However, things began to unravel when the landowners who could read and write, found on the share certificates that their JV partner was a company none of them knew about.

“They next things they knew, a search with the Land and Survey Department, found they were no longer the owners of the land,” Ng said.

He said their report to MACC was not only to investigate what role the assistant minister had played in the land grab but explain how could a non-Bumiputera own Malay customary rights land.

Ng said the assistant minister was taking advantage of the villagers’ inability to read or write. – December 7, 2018.