By John Pangkatana

LANDOWNERS say there has been no meaningful consultation or engagement with them by the proponents of the Kerema/Meporo Agro Forestry Project.

This was highlighted as part of the people’s objection to Koaru Resource Owners Company Limited’s application for a Special Agriculture Business Lease (SABL) for Portion 323C in the Gulf Province, during the Commission of Inquiry (CoI).

By Scott Waide

Timber rights in the Nuku Maimai SABL (Portion 26C) in West Sepik have been traded for hundreds of millions of dollars on the international market as the newswire story below reveals

Pacific Plywood Acquires Harvest Rights for 65,800 Hectares of Forest in Papua New Guinea

Total Investment Involves HK$310 Million

By Scott Waide

In Madang town today my wife and I met a child – a boy of about seven – no more than a meter tall. He was selling DVDs

I don’t always buy DVDs on the streets but there was something about this kid that drew my attention and I couldn’t put my finger on it.

By Jimmy Kalebe

Landowners in the four Special Agriculture Business Lease (SABL) in East Sepik yesterday called on the provincial and National Government to revoke all SABL in the province, report the Post Courier.

In a petition drafted over the weekend by landowners from Turubu and Sausso Local Level Government and Nungwaia/Bongos, the people demanded that their land under SABL be returned to them.

By Kirk Huffman*

The Republic of Vanuatu in the southwestern Pacific is classed by foreign economists as one of the world's poorest nations. This mistaken view is only true if one believes that lack of modern money = 'poverty'.

Vanuatu consists of 83 inhabited tropical and semi-tropical islands with a current - almost completely indigenous Melanesian - population of around 230,000 which possesses twice as many languages and cultures as the whole of the (expanded) EU.

The Commission of Inquiry into the Special Agriculture Business Leases heard that an officer from the Department of Lands and Physical Planning illegally carried out a Land Investigation Report (LIR) on more than one thousand hectares of land which is the subject of the inquiry, reports the Post Courier.

The CoI also heard that he had conspired with another Lands officer in carrying out the LIR that covers 1058 hectares of land in portion 2485 C of Iarogala 1 and 2 in Papa Village of Central Province.

For 36 years this political system has not solved your problems yet somehow the sheeple continue to have blind faith in a failed system. It’s produced the Bougainville crisis, the World’s third largest Environmental Disaster at Fly River, 5.2 million hectares of land stolen, human rights abuses and police brutality, massive theft of public monies, an education system that fails to produce nation builders, a health system that doesn’t work and etc...

By John Pangkatana

LANDOWNERS not reflected in the Purari Development Authority (PDA) Inc. Special Agriculture Business Lease (SABL) for up to 700,000 hectares of land in the Baimuru District have won a psychological victory. The PDA land title is set to be revoked, reports the Post Courier.

This is understood to be one of the largest land leases issued under the SABL lease-lease back provisions for customary land instituted under the Government’s Lands Department’s new reform.