By Jimmy Kalebe in Post Courier

THE Turubu landowners of portion 144c in East Sepik planning to stage a protest march if their graviences are not fully addressed by the authorities.

The landowners have drawn up their petition and presented it to the authorities, especially the Department of Agriculture and Livestock and Wildlife, Lands and Physical Planning and the Forest and Climate Change departments.

The gathering will take place at Mundawin village in Turubu LLG with representatives from the concerned villages along the coast and the government agencies today.

The landowners claimed their last attempt to get parties together with them to sort out the issues was unsuccessful.

Instead, the landowner company, Limawo Holdings Ltd, hold a meeting on November 18, 2013 and called for all landowners within Log Pond site and neighbouring villages to attend without inviting specific government agencies.

This has showed that there are still big issues to be discussed and common understanding should come about so that local people will be well informed and take part meaningfully in the establishment of the project.

The meeting, that will be held today, will include majority of the landowners who are affected from the log pond area as well as those in the road alignment

The landowners are calling on the ministers for DAL, Lands & Physical Planning and Forest & Climate Change to come and response to their petition at their village.

The landowners said if their petition was not received well, the people would be looking at the next option and that is to stage a protest march.

Gabriel Molok, a landowner at Turubu Bay, said the protest march was a way of conveying message to the authorities that "people see that something is wrong with this project which needs to be ironed out" before advancement begin in the oil palm project.