KUALA LUMPUR: IOI Corp Bhd says its joint venture unit IOI Pelita Plantation (IOI Pelita) and eight local communities from the Tinjar area in Sarawak have settled decades-long land dispute case that began in the mid-1990's.
Both parties signed a landmark final settlement agreement recently witnessed by officials from the Sarawak state government, community leaders, and representatives from the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).
"Pursuant to the agreement, IOI Pelita will relinquish or excise 4,615 hectares of land from its provisional lease, and the Sarawak state government will subsequently gazette that excised land as Native Communal Reserve for agricultural use by the eight affected communities, effectively giving these communities an ownership title to the land.
"All the parties have agreed that any further division of the excised land among the eight communities, should that be their wish, must be in accordance with the native customary law," IOI group said in a statement.
Over the course of this land dispute, the group stated that there had been various attempts to resolve the issue, including through the court system and mediation.
However, the dispute was complicated due to involvement from eight communities comprising more than 3,500 settlers, with many of them having overlapping claims on the land.
"Furthermore, at the heart of the dispute was the issue of the correct interpretation of the state legal ownership versus native customary rights over the provisional lease land.
"In 2018, a new attempt to resolve the dispute was launched by IOI Pelita, with guidance provided by RSPO and certain non-governmental organisations to ensure the resolution process is conducted transparently and follows the free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) process," IOI said.
The group said the resolution process had started with the formulation of a resolution plan which was approved by RSPO.
Each stakeholder made its utmost effort to contribute to the success of the resolution plan.
The Sarawak government agreed to provide the communities with a title to that land while the communities agreed to divide the land among themselves according to native customary law.
"The civil society has contributed towards building the communities' awareness and conducted community participatory mapping to help them understand the complex land-related issues.
"Lawyers and government officials provided the communities with expertise on legal and native customary rights. The negotiation between IOI Pelita and the communities was facilitated by Dr Ramy Bulan, a renowned scholar and expert on indigenous people's customary rights," it said.