Source: PNG Loop

Parliament sits at 10:00 am today starting off the second week of sessions for the three weeks assigned in the May Sitting, and one important thing  is the Land Grabbing Issue that hit the PNG and International news headlines in recent weeks.

Source: Radio New Zealand

The sustainable forestry organisation FORCERT in Papua New Guinea says developers and government players should consult more in communities where they set up logging projects.

A Technical Advisor to FORCERT, Peter Dam, says that due to rampant logging, only a few small parts of forest remain intact on the whole of New Britain.

This and other parts of PNG have been heavily clear-felled by logging projects, including those under the guise of Special Agricultural Business Leases.

Source: Peiley Lau

The Prime Ministers failure to implement the SABL Commission of Inquiry recommendations and revoke the unlawful SABL leases and stop the illegal logging has again been put into the spotlight, this time by a new report on illegal logging in PNG from the influential Chatham House group in the United Kingdom.

Source: The National

The Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) is backing non-government organisations in demanding for the World Bank to end its support for land and resources grabbing in Pacific communities, under the pretext of making customary land more productive.

PANG said the terrible outcomes of such business environments include the illegal land grab taking place in the country, with over five million hectares of customary land taken from local people without their consent for commercial use.

PANG supports demand for World Bank to end its support for resource grab

Source:The National

SPECIAL Agricultural Business Leases (SABLs) which are not genuine will be cancelled, Prime Minister Peter O’Neill says.

He said Cabinet had set up a ministerial committee to look into the recommendations in the SABL inquiry report.

He said the committee would recommend to the Government what actions to take.

“We are now going as far as trying to cancel many of the leases,” he said.

“I want to assure the nation that most of the leases that

are not genuine have taken

Source: The National

PRIME Minister Peter O’Neill says a ministerial committee to implement the recommendations from the inquiry into Special Agriculture Business Leases (SABLs) will meet next week.

This follows concerns by Enosh Janduo, the president of the Sausse local level government (LLG) in Yangoru-Saussia district,  East Sepik, during a visit to Yangoru on Wednesday.

Janduo told O’Neill that the people were victims of the SABL where there had been a lot of land grabbing.

Source: Radio Australia

The comments come in the wake of the release, earlier this week, of a report by Oxfam which found all of Australia's big four banks are involved in financing relationships with companies with links to unethical practices over land in developing countries.

Source: PNG Exposed

Lina Gawi, from Geborobi village in the East Sepik Province, settled in Bumbu when her daughter was seven years of age. Now she is a mother of 5 adult children, She was not very happy when the bulldozer belonging to RH bulldozed the area which they called home for the past 40 years,