By JIMMY KALEBE

FRUSTRATION has build up for landowners in Turubu LLG whose land has been the subject of Special Agriculture Business Lease (SABL) in East Sepik Province.

Photo: Landowners gathering in Mundawin village for the meeting to put pressure on relevant authorities to give back their land title on portion 144c in Turubu LLG in East Sepik on Monday. Pihoto: JIMMY KALEBE.

By Nalau Bingeding*

By Jimmy Kalebe

AFTER a successful move by many landowners, civil societies and individuals in the country, Prime Minister O’Neill has received the SABL report.

Following that a concern landowner in Turubu LLG Fr Willie Suai has made a call to the Prime Minister to honor the report and cancelled all leases granted under the SABL which were found to be null and void.

Source: Radio New Zealand

Transparency International in Papua New Guinea fears the outcome of inquiries into the controversial Special Agricultural Business Leases will be ignored.

There has been wide criticism of the abuses of the SABL system and last month in parliament prime minister Peter O’Neill tabled a report from a commission of inquiry which detailed widespread corruption and mismanagement.

The report found the vast majority of the leases failed to secure consent of landowners.

By Joey Tau, Freelance Journalist Pacific Media

The Special Agriculture and Business Lease (SABL) is a failed concept, and must be done away with in Papua New Guinea.

That’s according to the Director of the Papua New Guinea National Research Institute, Dr Thomas Webster in Port Moresby recently.

Dr Webster said the recently Commission of Inquiry into SABL revealed that only four out of the rest were credible, while the rest had illegalities.

A new radio advert on the SABL land grab has hit the airwaves in PNG.

The advert calls on Prime Minister Peter O'Neill to cancel the fraudulent SABL leases and stop the illegal logging.

Peter O'Neill has released two Commission of Inquiry reports that expose widespread fraud in the issuing of SABL leases over more than 5 million hectares of customary land.

By Nalau Bingeding

I, just like everyone else who has an interest in Special Purpose Agriculture Business Leases (SABLs), want to see SABLs outlawed in this country.  However, when it comes to the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) on SABLs, I do not have any high expectations about the outcome of that inquiry.

This is simply because the SABL concept is well embedded in several legislations and involves some highly technical issues, thus the removal of SABLs may not be that easy as some people would like to think.