Church warns people living on its land

By EHEYUC SESERU
THE Evangelical Lutheran church is warning people illegally occupying its land around the country to voluntarily vacate it.
Head Bishop Rev Jack Urame said people claiming to be landowners and those who were currently occupying the church’s land illegally, needed to do the right thing to move off church land.
Rev Urame said ELC-PNG had more than 500 pieces of lands and properties around the country.
“Most of those land are currently being occupied illegally by individuals, corporate organisations and even other churches,” he said.
Rev Urame said some people occupying church land had been tricked by parties claiming ownership of the land and bought the land from those people.
“They are occupying it illegally without knowing that church is the rightful owner with title,” he said.
“Individuals are causing problems for families in selling land to them illegally.”
The church sounded the warning as there is currently an eviction on illegal settlers on church land (portions 69, 70 and 78) at Nagada outside Madang town.
Rev Urame said the eviction at Nagada was a signal to all illegal occupants of other church land around the country, saying that people or organisations must volunteer to leave the land belonging to the church that they were occupying.
“I am appealing to those people illegally occupying church land and properties to voluntarily start moving out,” he said.
“We don’t want to repeat the same scenario of Nagada.
“It (eviction) is also a strong point to illegal settlers not to come back to Nagada in a dubious way.”