After 47 years of independence, it's time that an Orang Asli be picked to head the Orang Asli Affairs Department - the government agency which looks after the welfare of the country's indigenous peoples.

Opposition leader and DAP chairman Lim Kit Siang said he discussed the issue and the plight of the Orang Asli at a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak yesterday.

"I told Najib that the time has come for an Orang Asli to be appointed director-general of the Orang Asli Affairs Department...," said Lim in a press statement today.

According to the DAP leader, Najib's response was that the department did not come under his ministry, but that of Rural Affairs Ministry under Abdul Aziz Shamsuddin.

"Najib agreed however that such an appointment is long overdue," Lim added.

Lim lamented that the Orang Asli community continues to be seriously unrepresented in major decision-making processes affecting their future.

There are 19 distinct ethnic Orang Asli groupings in Peninsular Malaysia with a total population of 105,000, constituting 0.5 per cent of the country's population.

Majority live under poverty line

"Some 80 percent of Orang Asli live below the official poverty line and remain the most unhealthy community, relentlessly losing their ancestral land through resettlement, logging, mining, dam construction, golf course development, plantation schemes, relocation and assimilation into mainstream society," Lim said.

He said that two recent events had again highlighted the "grave" marginalisation of the Orang Asli from the mainstream of national development.

They are the "mysterious" death of five Orang Asli children in Cameron Highlands and the allegation that more than a dozen Orang Asli pupils in a primary school, Sekolah Rendah Kroh, were barred from sitting their crucial Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah four years ago.

"DAP calls on the cabinet to appoint Orang Asli to the posts of director-general and state directors of the Orang Asli Affairs Department by the end of the Eighth Malaysia Plan next year," added Lim.