Pembangunan Warisan di Malaysia: Tinjauan Umum Tentang Dasar

This paper is a preliminary investigation on heritage development policies in Malaysia by focusing on the legislation of 2005 National Heritage Act and the establishment of National Heritage Department (2007). The acquainting with these two aspects is importance before undertaking research on heritage protection and restoration in this country because they are the most basicelements in the field. The argumentations were based on the researchers experiences in this field and direct observation on the current scenario. It is argued that the 2005 National Heritage Act gazette was one of crucial event in the history of heritage development in this country. It had widen the scope of protection and restoration of the heritage as compared to the previous legaldocuments. The Act, however, had not being supported by effective implementation machineries. In fact, it is argued that the establishment of National Heritage Department and the marginalizing of National Museum functions had brought counter effects as it created to so called ‘structural lags’which disadvantaging all parties because it disorganized the implementation machineries and coordination between the agencies.