No action seen on land inquiry report after almost one year
Almost a year after the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into African ancestral land ownership submitted its report to Minister of State Joseph Harmon, there appears to have been no action on its contents.
According to Chairman of the Commission Reverend George Chuck-ASang, he has received no feedback since submitting his report.
“The last communication was a recommendation that we send it [the report] through the Commissioner of Lands and Surveys to Minister of State Joseph Harmon,” he told Stabroek News yesterday.
Efforts to contact Harmon and the Commissioner of Lands and Surveys Trevor Benn yesterday were unsuccessful.
According to Chuck-A-Sang, he was most concerned about people who have been able to quickly get properties under the noses of owners but nothing in the report required urgent attention.
“Whatever case we could have dealt with urgently, we passed it to the relevant authority immediately,” he noted before adding that he had at least expected the report to be made public.
The Commission, which completed its work in April, 2018, had been initially tasked by President David Granger with examining and making recommendations to resolve all the issues and uncertainties surrounding the individual, joint or communal ownership of land acquired by freed Africans; claims of Amerindian land titling; and other matters relative to land titling.
After resistance from the Amerindian community, which had argued that Amerindian land titling should be treated as a separate issue, it was decided that the commission would proceed to investigate only matters in relation to African ancestral lands and other general land matters.
At the time of the submission of the final report, no official directive was issued on the way forward as relates to the commission examining Amerindian land titling.
The commission was chaired by Reverend Chuck-a-Sang, who worked along with commissioners David James, Carol Khan-James, Professor Rudolph James, Lennox Caleb, Berlinda Persaud and Paulette Henry.