“We can enforce the state’s Community Chief and Head Ordinance 2004 when the time is right.

“But this is not the only way because we can also go through legal procedures,” said Assistant Local Government and Housing Minister Penguang Manggil.

Last month, Deputy Rural and Regional Development Minister Sivarasa Rasiah said the federal government would go ahead with the appointment of MPKK in Sarawak despite resistance from the state government.

Although the Pakatan Harapan (PH) government had formed the MPKK to replace the village security and development committee (JKKK) in the country, Sarawak is still adopting the JKKK system.

Penguang said the state government was against MPKK not because they did not favour the system but because the appointment of MPKK would split the rakyat in rural areas.

“They (PH) claim that it is to ‘bridge’ the gap between the federal government and the rakyat. But to me, it’s unnecessary because there’re so many federal agencies and they can always use the existing mechanism (to do so).”

He said the appointment of MPKK is purely political.

“It’s their (PH) first step to ‘political colonisation’ in Sarawak.

“If they claim the appointment of our tuai rumah (longhouse chief) is political, then theirs is even more political because one of the conditions to be appointed to MPKK is that the person has to be a PKR member and everything has to be done at their service centres,” he said.

Penguang said the state’s existing procedure of appointing its own community leaders was in “no way” political.

“We have our standard operating procedures (SOP) which have been in place for a very long time.

“Any nomination of the tuai rumah has to go through an election and the minutes have to be recorded and submitted to the district officer.

“The district officer will table it in the appointment of community leaders management committee at the divisional level,” he said.

On another matter, Penguang also said they would table the Natural Resources and Environment Ordinance in the coming state legislative assembly to impose a heavier penalty on those who carried out open burning.

“It has already been passed in the state Cabinet and we hope to table it in this coming state assembly,” he said, adding that currently the penalty and compound fine are not deterrent enough.