By Franklin Kolma / Post Courier

A development researcher has found that land mobilisation and Public-Private Partnership policies renders legitimate traditional land and resource owners mere spectators.

Anthropologists Fredrick Kosu, who studies major project land and resource owning communities around the country, said that it was truly sad to see the maltreatment being dished out to unassumpting customary land and resource owners in PNG. Through is extensive research he noticed that there were was a common trend of traditional landowners being swindled out of full resources beneficiary potentials. 

This was the case simply because the government's Land Mobilisation and Public-Private Partnership regimes did not allow for native growth and were deceptively crafted to promote land and resource grabbing. 

It is seemingly a way for the government to take away customary land from the traditional landowners and give them to developers and investors. There is absolutely no place for the customary landowners in PPP unless the land owners have the money to partner; a luxury that I am certain the majority of PNG landowners do not have.

The scholar appealed to traditional customary land and resource owners and ILG leaders who attended the recent regional Customary Land Summit and later this year, the National Land Summit 2019, to reject Customary Land Mobilisation and the Public-Private Partnership policies.