Latest update March 29th, 2024 12:59 AM
Aug 26, 2013 News
…similar initiatives for other areas
President Donald Ramotar led a team of government officials and officials from the Lands and Surveys Commission (GL&SC) to Cotton Tree Village, West Coast Berbice on Friday to sort out land dispute issues and start a historic process of granting legal documentation to residents there.
For several years, there has been the issue of land occupation in Cotton Tree Village. Accompanying the President to the area, too, was Minister of Natural Resources, Mr. Robert Persaud and Chairman of the Mahaica Mahaicony Abary/Abary Developmental Authority (MMA/ADA) Rudolph Gajraj. The event was held at the Cotton Tree Primary School.
The President said that the matter was brought to his attention some time ago “and we started to settle this matter once and for all.” He noted that it is a “historic problem which has been in the making for a long time whereby lands were given out to people and some of them sold out but no title was passed to them while some died out and some migrated and in the mean time, over the years, it was festering and beginning to cause some problems in the community itself.”
The Guyanese leader stated that the time to settle the land problems in Cotton Tree is now, because “we have been giving lands to people for housing, agricultural use, generally because we want people to have a better quality of life and we don’t want any squatting.” He noted that squatting could have been justified a few years ago during a previous administration “when they never used to be giving people land, but you can’t say that that is the same situation today because this government has given over 100,000 house lots…”
Mr. Ramotar added, too, that lands are being opened in different places while newer lands are being created for those who wish to open and establish industrial estates.
Another issue he raised speaking to the MMA/ADA area, he said, is the situation whereby people have been renting lands illegally, “exploiting people and many of them don’t even live in Guyana anymore.” Within the law, the President has asked the authority “to try to bring these things to an end.” “We can’t have like the days of old when you had absentee landlords…people never used to see their estates and collecting a whole set of money.” The Government’s position, he stated, is whereby the lands must go to people who will use it. “We don’t want to give people land to speculate with or use it as a tool to exploit other people— the land must be used…in a productive way.”
The process of removing absentee landlords will be underway immediately “and we cannot afford to have these things continuing.” The Guyanese leader said that he expects a battle with those absentee landlords, “we are up against a set of people that have already sacrificed the development of this country for their own personal, narrow agenda.”
Minister Persaud stated that, “You had no titles or papers to assure you or your children, that in years to come, anyone will question the legality of your occupancy and our response to your call is certainly to indicate how caring and considerate we are, as a government, in terms of ensuring your future is secure.”
He stated that for too long the situation existed whereby residents of Cotton Tree and other West Berbice Villages did not have legal documentations for their lands. The process of granting legal occupancies to residents, Persaud said, must be done in a manner that complies with the law “and at the end of the day we reduce and prevent any form of conflict.” He called on the residents to extend their fullest cooperation to the Lands and Surveys team.
Persaud stated that similar exercises will be taken to other parts of the country, where the same situation of land tenureship and land administration exists. One of the barometers, Persaud said, of a functioning democracy is not only about free and fair elections and human rights, “but it has been found in recent times is how do we manage the issue of access to lands and ownership of lands.
The next such planned initiative will be at Hogstye Village on the Corentyne where farmers have similar issues, as well as Onderneeming in Region Two, Port Kaituma in Region One, and Lethem in Region Nine. (Leon Suseran)
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THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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Election campaign start already??