KUALA LUMPUR: The Malay Consultative Council has called for the status of government land to be converted to Malay reserve land in view of land ownership disparities between races in the city centre.
Its constitutional and consultative bureau chairman, Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Abdul Rahman, said if the government did not safeguard the land, it might be sold off or make way for development.
“Once the land is converted into Malay reserve land, the government can plan development projects, where more Malays can participate in urban economic activities, reside there and do business,” he said here yesterday.
He said the move would strengthen the position of Malays in the urban areas.
He stressed that the council did not intend to take away non-Bumiputera land, individuals’ undeveloped land or the city’s green lung for the plan.
He hoped the conversion exercise could be carried out the soonest before the earmarked parcels of government land were “eyed” by those with capital.
“I was made to understand that the Bumiputeras do not own any land in central Kuala Lumpur.
“In Kuala Lumpur, land ownership among the Malays constitutes 21.9 per cent, which includes government-owned land under its agencies.”
At the Umno general assembly recently, Wanita chief Datuk Seri Shahrizat Abdul Jalil had proposed that every plot of Malay reserve land making way for development should be replaced by another plot of land of equal size and value in a different location.