Landowners query MoA review meet

SEVERAL genuine landowners of the Kurumbukari (KBK) mine in Madang are questioning the legality of the memorandum of agreement (MoA) review already in its two weeks of consultative talks.
John Black, Anton Gambu, Peter and Nick Garima, Peter Kowane and Ben Tee all from KBK said the review was meaningless as it was illegal.
“Why illegal?
“Because the legitimate landowners have not been declared as landowners.
“The current review and all other deals that have been made to date are invalid.
“Project operator, MCC and Highlands Pacific as well as the government through its statutory agencies have failed to see this or if they do, are knowingly negligent,” they claimed in a letter.
They said the state agencies as such were capitalising on the ignorance of the people in the project areas.
The group said as disputing clan groups and concerned citizens in the project area they called on the government to look into their concerns.
They now want to petition the Mining Minister Byron Chan to stop the MoA review and
for a directive to be given to speed up the
Land Titles Commission.
Black said yesterday that there were only two options genuine landowners wanted and
that is to allow the review to proceed without signing any documentation at the end or for
the Lands Title Commission (LTC) to begin already.
“As we anxiously await the LTC, many of our elders waiting to see any real benefits are dead while our young men and women have grown white hair already, not even sharing anything worthy”,
they said in their statement.
They queried why government stakeholders, the developer and  provincial government
have decided to deal with non-genuine landowner groups when making previous payouts.
This follows a nine-day ultimatum by KBK Landowner Association Chairman David Tigavu.
Tigavu solicited support from the four other landowner  companies to also stall the agreement signing until the K30 million seed
funding promised by the former government was given.
Talks held last week were a bit tense when
the interim Kurumbukari executives walked out of the meeting in protest.
They were recalled
to the meeting yesterday.