Plans for repatriation of WNB Sepiks start

IT was well over 40 years ago when the Sepiks along the West Coast of Wewak, East Sepik, left their villages of Urip and Woginara and travelled to West New Britain.
The thick forest around the Tamba and Kapore areas in the current Mosa LLG were felled by their axes in 1967 and 1968 to pave the way for the first oil palm settlements.
These were the beginning of the Land Settlement Scheme and the multi-million kina oil palm industry in West New Britain.
Further extension of the application towards this scheme saw many more people from other parts of East and West Sepik as well as other provinces apply. It led to the expansion of the settlement to Buvussi and Sarakolok, then to Galai with Kavui oil palm settlement as the last to be established.
These settlement areas were then changed to oil palm sub-division within the New Britain Palm Oil Ltd.
But after 40 years, talks are now under way to negotiate and establish appropriate steps towards the possible repatriation of these Sepiks – who are into their fourth and fifth generation – back to their homeland where they will settle in a newly proposed oil palm industry to be established along the Sepik plains in East Sepik.
Principal landowners in the area registered with the Basei Oil Palm project are working closely with the registered WNB-based East Sepik Land Development Corporation to effect the repatriation.
The landowners who visited the province and oil palm production sites in the NBPOL earlier this month confirmed that the multi-million kina oil palm project is to be established on about 100,000ha in ESP.
The project is to be established in the Ambunti, Dreikikir and the West Coast area as well as in and around the Sepik plains.
ESLDC public relation officer Alois Liliura said the move came about in the light of increasing family generations settling on a common 3ha land allocated more than 40 years ago.
“There is an extreme need for this repatriation,” Liliura said.