State corrects SABL’s flaws

By ALISON ANIS
LANDS and Physical Planning acting Secretary Romilly Kila-Pat said flaws identified by the National Research Institute in its report on administration of the special agriculture and business leases (SABLs) are some of the challenges the department was working on.
Kila-Pat said the original intent for customary landowners to lease their land to the state in return for the granting of special agricultural and business lease was correct legally but not many people had complied with the requirements.
“The legislative provisions for SABLs under the Land Act were well intended and remain so today,” he said.
“I think what we are faced with now is failing to comply with those provisions.”
Kila-Pat said the provisions had been abused in the process of implementation rather than the original intent of lease-lease back.
Although he admitted loopholes in the Lands Act had led to non-compliance of special requirements, he said the department should not shoulder the blame and that the onus was on everyone to work together to address that.
Kila-Pat made the remarks yesterday after NRI director Thomas Webster highlighted legal processes of customary land acquisition administered under Lands Act through SABL and violations of legal requirements.
Webster said there were major problems in the manner in which SABLs were processed and approved for leases and that included the failure to conduct simple preliminary checks to tell landowners of potential problems.
He said no proper land investigations, including investigation reports of identification of landowners, establishing boundaries and verification by provincial administration had been done.