Kula: Don’t touch native land - Nation | The Star Online

Kula: Don’t touch native land


IPOH: It is totally unacceptable for “even an inch” of orang asli land to be “taken away”, said DAP national vice-chairman M. Kulasegaran.

He said the land which the orang asli occupied in Gua Musang was the place where they looked for daily forest produce.

“I visited the orang asli some three years ago during a by-election and they were very unhappy about the way things were done. It will affect their livelihood as their main source of income is being destroyed,” he said.
Kulasegaran, who is Ipoh Barat MP, said the people should not forget that all the land in the country belonged to the orang asli.

On his Facebook page, Kulasegaran said much had been misunderstood about the orang asli’s environment.
He said the orang asli depended on large tracts of land for their survival.

“This includes substantial portion of land for cultivation of vegetation, commercial crops and beyond that, their land also covers vast tracts of forest reserve that is their foraging and hunting grounds,” he said.
“Any form of development must take into consideration the tracts of land which are now being disputed in many states,” he pointed out.

It was reported that a large part of the 4,000ha of Sungai Relai Forest Reserve in Gua Musang, Kelantan, had been allegedly logged by a firm linked to Perak DAP chairman Datuk Ngeh Koo Ham.

Ngeh had denied any form of logging or pollution on the piece of land which he co-owns.

He also noted that there was no orang asli settlement on the land and no logs had been removed from there.

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