Ten lease titles cancelled

Minister for Lands and Physical Planning Justin Tkatchenko has announced the cancellation of 10 Special Agriculture Business Lease (SABL) titles.
Tkatchenko said among them was a portion 159C in Vanimo, Bewani Palm Oil Development Ltd, and East Sepik Oil Palm Development.
He said Bewani was being cancelled by a court decision but the loggers continued to log that location illegally.
“Even though the court has decided that this is illegal and the title has been cancelled, logging is still going on,” Tkatchenko said.
“East Sepik Palm Oil Ltd has been cancelled, court decision as well, failure to comply with the Land Act and SABL void and non-effective.
“When the message went out, some volunteered and surrendered the SABL titles – from NCD, Gulf and Central.
“One of the big issues is portion 8C, Baimuru Gulf. Purari Development Holdings got a SABL title for more than 650,000 hectares, one third of the province, and it covers all the oil and gas projects.
“That has been recommended for cancellation, irregularities of the process and the conduct of interviewing and identifying of landowners, which hasn’t been done properly.”
Tkatchenko said Gulf Governor Chris Haiveta had written asking for all the SABLs in the province be cancelled because they had not followed proper processes in dealing with the true landowners of those areas.
He said these were the first 10 that had been cancelled out of 100 SABLs. The registrar of titles, Benjamin Samson, will have to summon a lot of these cases under Section 33 of the Land Registration Act.
A lot of these people who are holding on to SABL titles are now complying with the law but are not surrendering the titles back to the State.