Local closes school over demand

 By ZACHERY PER

IVINGOI High School in the remote Okapa district of Eastern Highlands is closed for an indefinite period over a compensation demand by a landowner.

The owner of the land where the school is located, David Tagindo, said the Education Department had never acquired the land through proper means and had illegally occupied it for 20 years.

Tagindo said he had a 99-year agriculture lease of the identified portion 160 of the land, it was leased to him on May 15, 1975.

He said the Eastern Highlands provincial government established the high school in 1993 without his permission.

“I made numerous correspondence with successive Eastern Highlands provincial administrators, education advisers and the provincial education boards, but have not received any favourable feedbacks,” Tagindo said.

“My last resort now is to close the school to get attention of the authorities.”

He demanded that the state pay him for using the land.”

Last Thursday, Tagindo was in the school and had changed the locks to the main gates and presented closure notice to chairman of the school board Michael Peho and Okapa district police station commander Sgt Mayang Oiufa. 

Acting Eastern Highlands provincial administrator Bill Kavanamur, after receiving necessary documents, had tasked provincial lands adviser Ralph Siove to prepare a report and that the matter be resolved once and for all.