According to a report, Selangor MB Datuk Seri Amirudin Shari promised that the regazettement will be done by early May. — Bernama pic
KUALA LUMPUR, March 26 – Selangor Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Amirudin Shari has given his word to regazette the Kuala Langat North Forest Reserve (KLNFR) as a forest reserve before Hari Raya Aidilfitri this year.
He promised that the regazettement will be done by early May, The Star reported on its website last night. The Muslim holiday which follows the Islamic lunar calendar, falls on either May 2 or 3 this year.
“A few hundred acres will go towards building Orang Asli villages,” said Amirudin was quoted as saying in a news conference in Selangor yesterday.
He said 97 per cent of the total land area that had been degazetted previously will be marked as a forest reserve and the remaining 3 per cent will be set aside for the indigenous Orang Asli settlements.
The PKR-led state government drew public ire last year when it degazetted 536.7 hectares out of 991.9 hectares of the KLNFR for a mixed development project.
Amirudin announced his government’s plan to reinstate the protection for the forest land in September 2021, four months after the backlash.
Local advocates for the environment and indigenous people told The Star they hoped there would be no further delay to the regazettement.
“We would have preferred a much earlier action to regazette the forests.
“However, as the saying goes, better late than never,” Sahabat Alam Malaysia president Meenakshi Raman was quoted as saying.
Centre for Orang Asli Concerns coordinator Colin Nicholas told the daily that the land allocation as announced by the MB was only what was due to the indigenous community who had to move from their homes in the 1990s for the construction of the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Sepang.
Nicholas told The Star that the 3 per cent replaced part of what they had been owed decades ago, and had “gone missing”.
He explained that the Orang Asli community received 90 per cent of the 1,000 acres of the degazetted KLNFR land previously but that 10 per cent went to outsiders.
“Those who received the 10 per cent were given titles whilst the land allocated to the Orang Asli did not come with titles,” he was quoted as saying.