Daru Island land mediation

Letters

IT has been over a year now since the Daru Island land mediation had been completed and the declaration of the Daru Island landowner or the decision of the South Fly district court should I say, is still pending for reasons anon.
This is a long time issue, where couple of mediations have already been conducted in the past years and I see no reason why the court has to delay the decision.
I was interested so I attended the mediation which ran for two weeks, from July 2-13, 2018.
During the mediation, about 21 claimants, claiming ownership of Daru Island and its surrounding areas contested.
Most of the claimants were from the inland and just a few from the coastal areas including the Daru Island.
In fact, more than 30 claimants had claimed ownership of Daru Island but were later cut down to 21 depending on their stories which they presented to mediators.
Daru is a small island township and it is hard to believe that in every part of the island there is a group who claims to own land and these so-called landowners have illegally sold much of the land to locals and outsiders.
Although this is known to authorities on the island, nothing has been done to arrest the people who have been illegally selling land without proper land titles.
This clearly shows that the State does not own the island, or does it?
I also don’t think Daru Island is State land anymore because clearly the 100 years of crown land policy, were Sir William MacGregor declared Daru Island as crown land in 1901 has long ended and, in fact, there are no purchase documents which states that Daru Island had been purchased by the State of PNG.
After the mediation, I realised that I was fooled to believe these so-called LOs to buy land from them because now I see that they have no land titles and their histories do not have enough evidence to support their claims.
Why is it taking too long to put this issue to rest? Is it because of politics, or because some people in authority are guarding their own interest and are afraid that their illegal activities concerning Daru Island land would be exposed to the public?
I am calling on the Western and South-Fly lands authority to fast-track the declaration process.
This is not a new case so the histories of claimants from the past mediations and the recently completed one should already be cross-examined and the declaration ready to be handed down straight away.
Give Daru back to the real LOs and tack back PNG.

Frustrated settler