A number of villagers in Tailevu and Rewa want to have their village boundaries surveyed.

The chairman of the iTaukei Land and Fisheries Commission (TLFC), Ratu Vananalagi Vesikula, said 54 villages in Rewa and 141 in Tailevu wanted their village boundaries surveyed.

In Rewa, 34 villages had been demarcated and 103 in Tailevu.

Ratu Vesikula claims the villagers had declined at first because some politicians, during the election campaign last year, told them that the demarcation would lead to Government taking their land outside the village boundary.

“Some of the villages stopped surveyors from coming to the village,” Ratu Vananalagi said.

“Now when they realised they were fed with the wrong information, they wanted their village surveyed.”

He said villagers were told to write to the Commission if they wanted the demarcation. The exercise would end this year or early next year.

The demarcation of villages, Ratu Vananalagi said, started between 1930 and 1940 by the then Ministry of Lands and the Commission.

During this period, he said 106 villages in the provinces of Ba, Ra, Tailevu, Naitasiri and Nadroga were surveyed.

“It was suspended in 1940 after the establishment of the Native Lands Trust Board,” he said.

According to Ratu Vesikula it was reactivated in 1990 after a Cabinet decision in 1989 with the joint responsibility of the NLTB and the Commission. It was suspended again in 2005 but resumed in 2012 after a Cabinet decision in 2010.

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