Kedah to issue land titles to new village settlers

SUNGAI PETANI: The Pakatan Rakyat state government in Kedah promises to give land titles to some 120 residents in the rural Bukit Selambau New Village.
State Industry, Investment and Agro-based Industry, Biotechnology and Information Committee chairman Datuk Amiruddin Hamzah said it was not a cheap political gimmick to gain voters’ support for PKR candidate S. Manikumar for the April 7 by-election.
“There is no need to politicise this matter because owning land for their own home is a basic need of the people.
“I have spoken with the Mentri Besar (Datuk Seri Azizan Abdul Razak) about this and he has given the go-ahead,” he said during a press conference at Yayasan Aman in Taman Desa Permai near here Wednesday.
The Kedah government had announced July last year that land titles would be issued to new villagers who have been lived in the settlements since 1948 when they were evacuated and relocated en masse because of the communist insurgency.
Amiruddin said he was making the announcement following recent findings by PKR campaign teams on the ground at the New Village that about 120 households had yet to obtain land titles after living there for generations.
“We discovered the problem about 10 days ago. Some of these people have lived there for three generations.
“It is possible that because we have many of our people on the ground at the moment, that some of them had taken the chance to inform us of their problems with land titles,” he said.
“It is also not because the former assemblyman V. Arumugam was inefficient in his job. If he had known earlier, we are sure he would had brought the issue up with the state,” he said.
As the land in question was state owned, Amiruddin said he was confident that issuing the land titles would not be an issue.
Perak, when it was ruled by Pakatan, had also promised land titles to new villagers but was told by the Federal Government that such a move may contravene provisions in the National Land Code