Very widespread idleness inside government departments responsible for administering land issues is one major cause for unpaid land rents to have reached millions of dollars.
Land rents are extremely easy to collect but the commission detected that the Department of Lands simply did not collect the land rents, the report said.
“Land rents are tied to the land leases and that any competent lawyer, once they are able to prove the debt, can go to court and either collect the debt, or the land is automatically forfeited, and sold off to somebody who can pay the rent.”
This matter was put to senior land officers, and it was suggested to them that they should call a tender immediately for the recovery of this outstanding amount in rents.
The report said land issue is driving minds of most that rioted three years ago.
The commission recommends that the cabinet direct the permanent secretary to the Department of Lands to prepare a paper that described the current weaknesses in land administration in Honiara.
The report said this includes adjacent Guadalcanal, and suggested approaches to strengthening weaknesses that hit lands division.
The commission said the government has the issue of land at the top of its agenda, and is certainly about to move on land issues.
Among the findings of the commission:
• It is impossible for an average wage-earner to acquire good title to household or small business land in Honiara, in a proper manner;
• Land within Honiara is terribly expensive; young people and particularly young married couples cannot access that land because the price is too high for them, and their wages or income are too low;
• There is no functional system, fair, equitable, to allow ordinary Solomon Islanders to acquire land for basic housing or small business in the Honiara area;
• The squatting option simply is the only option available because an unlawful system has been set up over the acquisition of land;
• People have been able to improperly acquire either government land or customary land, and have been able to manipulate their position, and have actually driven up land prices because they are able to access what is scarce commodity, in an improper manner;
• All levels of persons illegally squat and grab prime foreshore land along the Honiara beachfront and adjacent Guadalcanal; and,
• There is no effective mechanism to eject illegal squatters from prime foreshore land and the land issues at Burns Creek are insufferable.
