Lands and Surveys Commission meets with E’bo residents on unresolved land issues

May 21, 2018 News

Residents of Region Two [Pomeroon/Supenaam], who for years had faced difficulties in getting their land issues resolved, had the opportunity to meet with the Commissioner of Lands and Surveys, Trevor Benn.
The Commissioner said that the two-day outreach which began on Thursday is primarily to meet with the public to understand the issues involving land within the Region.
Benn explained that the Commission cannot make decisions on behalf of the people, by merely operating from Georgetown. He noted that it is essential that information be presented to the Commission based on ground visits, before any practical measures can be taken in resolving issues.
“The problems that we can deal with, we try to deal them on the ground. For those that we cannot deal with we try to come up with a resolution for them over time… Ideally we want to make sure we understand what the issues are… We don’t want to make a decision based on just letters, without coming to the field to understand what’s happening,” Benn stated.

A glimpse of the meeting between residents and the Commission last Friday.

Over the two days, Benn and team visited officials of both the Regional Democratic Council and the Anna Regina Town Council. During the culmination of their visit, however, the team met with members of the community in the RDC boardroom, in an attempt to resolve outstanding land issues of the residents.
During the course of the visit, it was revealed that most of the residents in Region Two have been waiting since the 1980s for their land documents to be processed.
When asked why the delay in processing these documents, Benn replied, “It may be a staff member who is trying to victimize a member of the public or maybe it is a member of the public who is ignorant as to how the system operates. So we want to deal with these issues on the ground.”
Benn said that the Commission is working towards establishing a system in which persons can receive titles to land documents within a six-month period.
There are plans to hold similar outreaches in other Regions.

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