KUCHING, Sept 22 — Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah should resign from his ministerial post for amending the Sarawak Land Code, which has caused widespread unhappiness among the Dayak community, a Dayak non-governmental organisation said today.

Dayak National Congress (DNC) president Paul Raja said the hue and cry of the Dayak community against the amendments, instead of ceasing, is getting louder by the day.

He said Uggah should be wise enough to feel that if he can no longer carry out the agenda for the community, then it is time to call it a day.

“It is better that he resigns from his position with honour and dignity rather than being discarded by the voters later,” he said.

“At last week’s Dayak National Conference, about 2,000 participants have expressed their unhappiness over the amendment to the land code relating to the Native Customary Rights (NCR) land,” he said.

Raja said he was one of the lawyers involved in drafting the amendments to the land code, but what was being tabled in the July sitting of the Sarawak State Legislative Assembly was an entirely different amendments.

“I wasted my time, money and effort to help them in the last draft amendments,” he told Malay Mail.

He said the Dayak community is angry because large areas of their territorial domain (pemakai menoa) and communal forest reserves (pulau galau) which they inherited will be lost by the amendments to the Land Code.

Raja said the natives, after getting the approval, are issued with licences to occupy native territorial domain (NTD) as their usufructuary rights, a term that turn them into squatters.

“This is an insult that no one can bear when our ancestors have been here for thousands of years yet a government that was set up yesteryears had the gall to call our rights as usufructuary,” he said, explaining under the term the natives can use the land, but they cannot own it.

In the July 11 sitting of the Sarawak State Legislative Assembly, Uggah tabled the Sarawak Land Code (Amendment) Bill 2018 that sought to give the force of law to the NTD and issue title in perpetuity to the native territorial domain.

Uggah had assured that the Bill sought to resolve the problem arising from a Federal Court’s decision relating to the issuance of provisional leases to plantation companies and the reinstatement of section 5(2)(f) to relating to the creation of NCR land through other mean.

He had also explained that usufructuary stated in the Bill was merely a process of claiming areas as territorial domain.

He had said after the usufructuary right was established, the territorial domain would then be given a native communal title which conferred a proprietary right on it.