THE government will soon launch an inquiry to address issues of land allocation, land management and land titling, Minister of State, Joseph Harmon, announced on Wednesday.
Harmon said President David Granger is expected to make the announcement within the coming week of the establishment of a Lands Commission. This Commission will be tasked with examining and making recommendations to resolve all the issues and uncertainties surrounding the individual, joint or commonable ownership of lands acquired by freed Africans, and claims of Amerindian land titling and other matters relative to land titling.

The minister made the announcement at an inception workshop of the Land Degradation Neutrality Target Setting Programme of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification which was hosted by the Guyana Lands and Survey Commission at the Pegasus Hotel, Georgetown.
“It is hoped that all of the issues that have been unresolved over all these years, that we will be able to bring closure to them and resolve these issues in relation to land,” Minister Harmon said. The government is also working towards establishing programmes that will guarantee the sustainable use of lands while ensuring land resources are used for the livelihoods of all the people.

Meanwhile, chairman of the Guyana Reparations Committee, Eric Phillips last year had noted that the committee would provide information to the Government of Guyana (including the Opposition) for their claim of lands for reparatory justice and social cohesion in Guyana.
He had noted that there are three historical reasons why this claim has legal validity. Firstly, Phillips said history has recorded that enslaved Africans, who arrived in Guyana in mid-17th century and were in Guyana for 100 to 200 years, before the WaiWais and Wapishanas Nations, cleared 15,000 square miles or 18% of Guyana and lost 450,000 lives to genocide during their enslavement.

He said slavery “was and is a crime against humanity (United Nations Durban Declaration) and hence reparatory justice is being sought from the Government of Guyana, the inheritors of the land from the British. “Justice dictates that if Indigenous Peoples in Guyana can receive land for being here ‘first’ then Africans who were here before the WaiWais and Wapishanas should be legally entitled to land,” Phillips had said.

Secondly, Phillips noted that enslaved Africans built Guyana, adding that history has also recorded and forgotten that (Guyanese) Africans “had driven back the sea and had cleared, drained and reclaimed 15,000 square miles of forest and swamps. “This is equivalent to 9,000,000 acres of land. In short, all the fields on which the sugar estates are now based were cleared, drained and irrigated by African labour forces. All the plantations now turned villages and cities were built by unpaid African labour. In the process of building these plantations, careful research has shown that Africans installed the following (1) 2,580,000 miles of drainage canals, trenches and inter-bed drains, (2) 3,500 miles of dams, roads and footpaths, and (3) 2,176 miles of sea and river defense. The Venn Commission also reported that “to build the coastal plantation alone, a value of 100,000,000 tons of earth had to be moved by the hands of African slaves “(without machinery).”

According to Phillips the entire economy of Guyana in 1838, for example, was that created by enslaved Africans whereas our Indigenous brothers and sisters were living nomadic lives. Justice dictates that Africans should be given lands for clearing 18% of Guyana and providing free labour for over 200 years while indentured servants whom came after them, were paid and given lands.

His third point was that the last 25 years here have seen foreign firms receive huge swaths of lands at giveaway prices while Africans have received none. “Any Government or people interested in social cohesion, equity, equal access, economic and social justice… would take immediate steps …to grant lands to Africans for the massive and unparalleled contributions that they have made to Guyana.” Phillips had also called for the Government to immediately freeze the granting of land leases to anyone, local or foreign, until the reparatory land issue is addressed. He also called on the Amerindian Peoples Association, the National Toshao Council, the Catholic Church and all other religious groups, as well as any other Guyanese who believe in justice, “to support this just cause.