The new law and prescriptive rights

Mar 13, 2011 Features / Columnists, My Column

---

By Adam Harris

Land has long been recognized as the factor that offers the greatest stability in one’s life. From time immemorial people have been known to demarcate a piece of land to establish a homestead and to ensure that there is something to cultivate food.
In Guyana, where the land was owned by the plantation owners, people who worked on the plantation either squatted near to the place of their employment or later, as the freed slaves did, bought their portion of the land.
The indentured labourers were allowed to occupy whatever land there was on the plantation and eventually they became the owners. The system used was one of prescription. Later, it became the established manner to own a plot of land. In independent Guyana, people who occupied a piece of state land for a period of twelve years could file for prescriptive rights.
The application would be advertised and if there is no challenge the courts would grant such rights. This is different from a lease, where people apply for a right to farm on a plot of land and are granted permission by way of a lease for a specified period. Leases are renewable and invariably they are extended.
This past week, the government passed a law that will change the manner in which people become land owners. People would occupy a plot for the specified period, make an application through the courts and succeed. Many of the rural land owners claimed property in this way.
About six weeks ago, I could not help but notice that former Government Minister Harripersaud Nokta made a number of applications for prescriptive lands for property on the Essequibo Coast. All of the people were his relatives and most lived overseas.
Given the recent passage of this legislation, I came to the conclusion that he got a wink and attempted to beat the new law. But I have to question the need to change a law that has been working well for almost a century. I was taught that if something is not broken, then don’t fix it. In short, if there is nothing wrong with the law then don’t change it.
This new law, as it stands, simply means that an individual can squat on a plot of land all his life and never hope to own it. By extension, if the government for whatever reason wants to repossess the land, the squatter has no option but to vacate the premises. I am not clear on the position if there is a permanent structure like a house.
During the debate, the parliamentary opposition was vocal in its objection to the modification. And the man in the street now wants to know the reason for the change. Admittedly there are hundreds of acres of state land and the government is bent on ordered and structured development of these.
Sugar lands have been sold ostensibly for the benefit of the sugar industry and for the housing programme being undertaken. I am not sure that any of the people who may have been seeking prescriptive rights are squatting plumb in the middle of the lands that the government has earmarked for development.
What I do know is that there have always been those who accuse the government of being selective in its allocation of land. I am also aware that the government is in a big legal battle over lands bought by one entrepreneur during the tenure of the previous administration.
This prime property is certainly worth so much more than it was sold for and it sits square in the middle of a modern development programme. The law will not affect this challenge in any way and besides, once property is bought, the state can only access it by way of compulsory acquisition.
But the issue here is a restriction on applications for prescriptive rights. There must be plots of land that the government wants and on which people now sit. If that is the case, then for what purpose would the government want these lands?
Is it a case of wanting to hold on to some property in the face of an expanded drive by people to own land? Is it a case of wanting land that could be sold and earn the public treasury money? Is there some ulterior motive?
I remember reading a short story a long time ago. At the time I was a student in the Government Teachers’ Training College. The story was entitled ‘How much land does a man need’. It spoke of a man who was promised all the land he could occupy. All he needed to do was walk from sunrise from a given point and return before sundown.
The man started off and as he progressed he encountered land more fertile as he progressed. So he walked and walked. Before he knew it the sun started to dip. He took to running, enveloping land as he went. He then realized that he had to reach the point from where he started, so he began running. In the end he reached where he started but he collapsed and died. It was then he got all the land he needed—six feet from head to toe.

---

---