KUCHING: The chairman of PKR Sarawak Baru Bian has blasted the Election Commission for being “negligent and irresponsible” in not printing more forms to register voters in Sarawak.“For the past two weeks, you cannot get forms anywhere in Sarawak from the Election Commission.

“This is negligent and irresponsible not to print enough forms to register voters,” he said at a press conference yesterday.He said he had been told by two non-governmental organisations and others involved in the ongoing registration exercise that there are no more forms left in the state.The Election Commission told them they are still waiting for the forms to be sent from Kuala Lumpur.
“Please print more forms as more and more people are politically conscious of their rights to register themselves as voters. Why should the Election Commission hinder them from registering as voters?” he asked.



DCM lying

On remarks made by deputy chief minister Alfred Jabu regarding native customary rights (NCR) land, Baru hoped that the government should carry out both the perimeter survey of communal native land as well as the individual properties and give them titles.

Jabu had said the procedures and system to survey and gazette NCR land had been in place for more than 30 years but it was the inability of the people to agree on the demarcation of their individual lots that had made it difficult.

Baru however accused Jabu of lying saying that the number of natives disputing the boundaries between one lot and another was very little.
“Individual disputes that his company handled are less than five or six percent. Even these disputes are not between natives, but with government, timber and plantation companies.

“More than 90 percent of the 200 cases before court are involving communal land belonging to a number of villages combined,” he said.“How can Chief Minister Abdul Taib Mahmud and Jabu mislead the people?” he said, stressing the boundary quarrel between natives were almost non-existent.Baru suggested that the government should begin with the cases in court in order to reduce court cases.