The one-day workshop held by the Dayak and Kandazandusun-Murut minority groups of Sabah and Sarawak in Kuala Lumpur earlier last week to find ways to improve their socio-economic status is seen as a definitive assertion of rights by the indigenous groups.
The significant development at the workshop, which was declared open by Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, was the adoption of several resolutions, including one calling for the formation of a Dayak chamber of commerce and industry.
One of the participants, lawyer-economist Peter Minos, a Bidayuh, said the Dayak chamber should be set up immediately, adding that it was important to give what he described as space for the present Dayak entrepreneurs and businessmen to interact among themselves and to discuss policies and strategies. He headed the workshop group that focused on addressing poverty.
Another workshop group focusing on equity issue said such a chamber would be able to encourage the greater involvement of Dayaks in business.
Jsamy Sadan Sagi, who headed the group, said the chamber could also monitor the progress made by Dayak entrepreneurs and businessmen besides offering consultancy services and other forms of assistance.
The chamber could also lobby for subsidies and incentives from the relevant authorities for their businesses, he added.
Jsamy said the chamber will call for a special fund to be set up for the Dayaks and Kadazandusun-Muruts to help increase the pool of entrepreneurs from the two communities.
Separate from Malays
The workshop was jointly organised by the Sarawak Dayak Graduates Association (SDGA) pro-tem committee and the Institute for Indigenous Economic Progress (Indep), Sabah. It was attended by about 500 participants ranging from intellectuals, academicians, businessmen to political leaders from the two communities.
The workshop had taken many months of planning and came soon after the federal government acknowledged through the Third Outline Perspective Plan (OPP3) and the Eighth Malaysia Plan (8MP) of the need to regard the two communities, who constitute bumiputra majorities in their respective states, as separate from the Malay and other Muslim groups in the country.
Dayak and Kadazandan-Murut leaders have said it was disadvantageous for them to be grouped together with the Malays and other Muslims under a single bumiputra group.
Apparently, Mahathir, pleased at the support of the two states indigenous groups for the Barisan Nasional, agreed to treat them as a separate group under the governments schemes to assist the economically-backward communities in the country.
Working quietly behind the scene for the past many months or even years to secure that governments recognition were Energy, Telecommunications and Multimedia Minister Leo Moggie who also heads the Iban-based Parti Bansa Dayak Sarawak (PBDS) and Bernard Dompol, Minister in the Prime Ministers Department who is a former Sabah chief minister and head of Upko, one of that states Kadazandusun-based political parties.
Participants also urged that a special government agency be established to look after the interests of the two bumiputra minority groups in their quest to be at par with other communities in the country.
Call for bigger quota
There was also a call for a bigger quota for the two communities in the fields of higher education and in improvements of facilities in Dayak and Kadazandusun-Murut majority rural areas.
Malaysiakini understands that all the resolutions adopted at the workshop would be tabled as a cabinet paper after it is signed by Moggie and Dompok.
Dompok when closing the workshop said it had served as a think-tank to plan strategies and work out solutions to improve the livelihood of the indigenous groups who, he added, are still plagued by poverty and many other problems.
It is timely for the voices from the intellectual minds of these communities be heard by the top-ranking administrative officials at the federal level, he said.
We also want to know where we stand and also how we can contribute in the nation-building process.
In the latest census, Dayaks make up about one million of the countrys population, and the Kadazandusun-Murut about 700,000, making them cumulatively the countrys third largest ethnic group after the Malays and Chinese.
We deserve equity distribution of economic-related activities, Dompok said.
TONY THIEN is a malaysiakini correspondent based in Kuching, Sarawak.
