I refer to the Malaysiakini report Kapar TOL holders continue to wait .

It is obvious to me that all these years, the original TOL holders of the Kapar land had been lied to and misled into believing that the alienation of the land in question was illegal, could be reversed and that they will get back ‘their land’.

It is high time the original TOL holders are explained the following facts so that they do not continue harboring false hopes:

TOL holders do not own the land being occupied under the TOL. The land remains as state land irrespective of the period it had been occupied under TOL.

A TOL expires not later than Dec 31 of the year it was issued.

Each time a TOL expires, the TOL holder may apply to have the TOL extended by no more than one more year. The land authorities may or may not approve the application for such extensions.

Because the land under TOL remains as state land, and if its application for extending the expiring TOL is not approved, the state authority can alienate this state land to anyone it chooses. Whether such action by the state was morally right or not is another matter for a different debate. The original TOL holders do not have priority over others in respect of such alienation.

In view of the above facts, if the state authority had alienated the land to others and had issued to them titles under the National Land Code, then these people are not ‘illegal owners’ as the original TOL holders had been led to believe. There is therefore no question of ‘reversing an error’ because there is no legal ‘error’.

The only way for the land to revert back to state land is for these others to voluntarily surrender the titles back to the state authority. However, in the above case, since these others have until now not volunteered such an act, I do not think they are going to carry out this act.

The report also mentioned that a lawyer is among the owners of the land in question. If this is true, then I am sure they would have covered all the bases when they applied for the state land.

The TOL system under the National Land Code had always been a source of injustice for people like the original TOL holders of this Kapar land but until the law is changed it is high time the relevant people explain the above facts to the original TOL holders and advice them to accept alternative plots of state land if such land should be offered to them.

Otherwise they may end up with nothing in the end.