Sabah : Minokok tribe to be part of agro scheme

Minokok people

KOTA KINABALU: A community that has struggled to keep pace with progress looks set to change for the better.

The Minokok people, a Kadazandusun sub-tribe of Ulu Tongod deep in the heart of Sabah, will soon be part of a government agropolitan scheme.

It will be developed with an estimated budget of RM200 million on their ancestral plots measuring over 7,700ha and they will remain guardians.

This will be made possible with the issuance of a communal title, which will be handed over by Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin on Thursday.

The title bears the names of 1,022 people who used to live in 16 villages within the area but had since moved out because of the lack of development.

Retired teacher Samun Unau, who was born in one of the villages called Lilinsah, said the scheme on their ancestral land will put them on track towards a new era of progress.

"We will be able to grow crops, send our children to school, run businesses in new shoplots and much more once everything is in place.

" The government will also be developing a large tract of the land for commercial crops and we the villagers will be the caretakers being owners of the land according to the communal title."

Samun, a retired teacher who heads a committee made up of leaders from the 16 villages, said life had always been a struggle for them.

"We had to abandon our villages in Ulu Tongod," he said, adding they began to leave their ancestral homes from as early as 1969.

"We kept our farm land and homes but in order to survive the ever changing world we had to move out and settle elsewhere."

The agropolitan idea is part of the long-term Sabah Development Corridor programme nurtured by the government think-tank Institute for Development Studies and Sabah Economic Development Authority.

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