2003 BLCC Letter to Pacific Inter Link of Malaysia
I have been instructed by my client, BLCC, to advise you to think twice before you commit the resources of PIL and the 14SA Group of Companies in a venture that is still mired in controversy and whose promised financial and economic rewards may prove to be illusory in the long run. Should you succeed in your bid to acquire any of the CDC oil palm, plantations up for sale, it would in all likelihood be on terms that include some form of leasehold on the land.
This presents three serious problems for PIT. First, the almost 104,000 hectares on which stand the vast plantations developed by CDC since its creation in 1947 are private lands, held in trust by Government for the Bakweri, are indigenous minority people who have occupied or used these lands since time immemorial. Second, these private lands were leased to the CDC for a term of 60 years to expire in 2007. The Bakweri landowners who grudgingly consented to this arrangement in 1947 have not been consulted this time around by Government to ascertain their future intentions regarding their ancestral lands.
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