Despite being granted its land title in 2019, the Village Council of Parabara in Region Nine is yet to receive the official documentation, which has put it at a disadvantage when seeking to get miners to abide by village rules.
According to Toshao Richard Andrew, miners are asking the Village Council to present the land title outlining the village’s boundaries when they are told that they are in Parabara. Without the land title document, he added, there is nothing that the village council can do and the miners continue to traverse in and out of the community without acknowledging the council. “We want to know what the position is with this land title because without this land title, the miners coming in and we have no right to tell them anything,” he said.
He revealed that issue is an ongoing one and at one point the council asked Regional Chairman Bryan Allicock about the land title. According to Andrew, Allicock said that the APNU+AFC administration had granted the land title. He said they were asked if they are in possession of the document and he told the Chairman that they were not.