Latest update February 4th, 2025 9:06 AM
After 28 years, Cuyuni farmer still awaits lease
Michael Cordis stagies a one-man picket outside the Lands and Surveys Department.
– pickets Lands and Surveys
A Cuyuni farmer, who has been waiting 28 years for lease to his farmlands in the Cuyuni area, would be satisfied for now, if he can just get a document to stipulate his rights to the land. The farmer staged a one-man picketing exercise outside the Lands and Surveys Department yesterday.
Michael Cordis claims that he applied to Lands and Surveys for the leasing of ten acres of land on the left bank of the Cuyuni River in 1982, twenty-eight years later, in 2010, he still has not gotten it.
In 1983, he began to pay rates and taxes because the department had granted him permission to cultivate the land. He stopped paying in 1987 because he was still waiting for the lease.
Cordis left the country in 1989 and returned in 1995 when he cleaned up the crops and planted some more. He left again in 2000 and returned in 2003. When he did, he discovered that two major entities had invaded the land and bulldozed all of his crops.
In 2006 he took the issue to Lands and Surveys and the courts, with Lands and Surveys and the two entities as the defendants. Lands and Surveys agreed to make a settlement with him by refunding 50 acres of land in 2007, adding that they would ensure that he got a document stating that.
When Cordis started clearing the land, he was stopped by one of the businesses he had taken court. He was told that he had no authority to do so until he got his lease.
Cordis claimed that he then approached the Minister of Agriculture, who sent him to the Office of the President, who sent him back to the Lands and Surveys department.
The latest position is that he was told that he would get the document this month, but when he got to the Lands and Surveys Department he was told that the lease was completed, but the President had not signed it. Cordis stated that he had been told the same thing as far back as 1983.
He then requested a document to present to the authorities at Bartica so that he could go ahead with the cultivation of his land. Explaining that it was very frustrating, Cordis said that he doesn’t intend to wait any more.
Since he has to wait to get the lease, he will go back to the old farm, and try to do some planting.
Cordis claims to have been defrauded by the authorities. He explained that after the terms of settlement, which he accepted, he paid a lawyer to get the paperwork done.
“The first thing that went wrong, when they issued the document, they issued it for 99-year lease. When I go to collect the lease, the Manager for Lands and Surveys told me that they don’t give 99-year lease” he stated.
Cordis questioned how such a mistake could be made at that level. “The first paper they sent me got 99 years. The lawyer had to do another paper instead of 99 years to 50 years. So I feel at this stage here, that the whole system making me a fool.”
Michael Cordis feels that if he cannot be issued with a simple document that states his rights to cultivate the land, there is no way that he would be given a lease after waiting 28 years and not getting it. (Ursulla Ramdayal)
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