The Sarawak government should also pay attention to the needs of agricultural small-holders in its land alienation exercise instead of concentrating largely on big plantations.

Sole opposition state assemblyperson Chiew Chin Sing (DAP- Kidurong) said at the current sitting of the state assembly that "it has been a long, long cry of many (in the state) about the dire need for farming land."

Ironically, Sarawak is Malaysia's largest state (about 123,000 sq km), equivalent to the whole of Peninsular Malaysia minus Perlis, with a population of about 2.3 million, more than half of whom live in the rural and coastal areas.

Land-rich Sarawak has seen in recent years an influx of peninsula-based big plantation companies in opening large tracts of land for oil palm.

Chiew, the state DAP deputy chairperson, said many associations in Sarawak had passed resolutions after resolutions urging the government to alienate farming land to them as well as to small-holders.

Legitimate cries

At the moment the most successful crop which has planted on a small-holder basis is pepper, one of Sarawak's important export earners.

Chiew said: "Their cries and requests (for alienated land for farming) are legitimate."

"Many huge tracts of land have been alienated for big scale plantation schemes but very few for the small-holders. We should look into this more carefully if we really care about the small holders," he added.

He said many young men who had either worked in the logging industry and other business enterprises, were finding it difficult to make a living in their present businesses.

"Just walk down the streets and ask the shopkeepers, they will tell you that not much is happening, life is not improving and they are not making the money and are looking for ventures into other businesses."

"There are fewer and fewer government contracts out for tender and we should have more of this, like contracts for roads and bridges, so that people can have work. Government projects must be tendered out to ensure transparency and accountability, not matter how small the projects to give chance to others as well."

Many are now thinking of small-scale agriculture but do not have the land, nor the fund.

"That is why I feel sure that with the availability of land in Sarawak, we can help them make a headstart as small-holders in developing our state's agricultural industry," Chiew said.

He cited some successful examples of Iban small-holders, who took the initiative to plant oil palm on temuda land or native customary rights land.

Chain reaction

"I said brave initiatives because sometimes this takes almost all of their savings for the capital investment and a lot of hard work. A friend of mine had planted about 4000 oil palm trees."

Chiew said: "It was hard in the first three years but now he and his family is harvesting and grossing about RM14,000 a month. We should encourage this sort of family scale industry. We should give them incentives too."

The opposition assemblyperson said inflation was rising following the hike in prices of fuel, construction materials such as steel, cement and gravel, food and other commodities, producing a chain reaction, affecting the lower income group the most.

He said unless the income also increased correspondingly to inflation rates it would hit hard on the average family with many financial commitments such as housing and car loans.

The government must find a mechanism to keep prices in check and there should be greater efforts to increase the tempo of economic development through local and foreign investments, the DAP leader added.