PRB Tenants Found Owning Land, Evicted

Public Rental Board (PRB) has issued eviction notices to tenants who were found owning assets like land.

This was revealed by PRB manager properties, customer service and public relations Maloni Daurewa, yesterday.

He was presenting the board’s 2018 annual report to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Social Affairs.

Through a recent survey, he said PRB identified tenants who had purchased land.

“They request us to give them time to build their homes before they transit out but we issue them with eviction notices as part of our policy,” Mr Daurewa said, adding that tenants were profiled every year on a six months interval.

Due to the lack of funding and unavailability of buildable land, an issue faced by the board was that it could not achieve its target of building 1000 flats annually.

The objective was revised in 2019 to 100 flats per annum and from 2017 to 2021 it had built 48 units in Savusavu, 36 units in Kalabu and 36 units in Simla, Lautoka.

“For these projects we managed to make use of land that we already have,” he said.

“We have not acquired any land for new development that’s why we have a low number. We have a ratio of 50 units per acre so these are all the balance lots we had with us. We are still in the process of trying to acquire land.”

Collaboration agreement

With the recent collaboration with Housing Authority of Fiji, PRB is allocated some land for public rental housing in every housing subdivision development.

Mr Daurewa said the board was also in talks with iTaukei landowners for the possibility of acquiring iTaukei land for housing purposes.

He added that with the appointment of the new PRB board, they were in the preliminary stages of drafting a Terms of Reference to engage a lead consultant for the development of the vacant land where the demolished Raiwaqa four-storey barracks were located.

Between 2018 to May, 2022 PRB had migrated 40 tenants to home ownership and from their records the estate with the highest turnover of tenants was Raiwai flats due to their high income status.

In addition he stated that a Memorandum of Understanding was being drafted with Police to address the high crime rate in the area.

“We are thankful for the partnership with Police, we managed to install CCTV cameras in these red zone estates and they are now receiving live feed at the police command center,” he said.

“Just recently we started the estate meetings and also engaged other stakeholders like Police, church groups and the Ministry of Youth who have visited some estates.

“The board does not tolerate criminal activities or allow the tenants to continue staying with us. We take action as per our tenancy agreement where we issue them the 30 days eviction notice. If they continue to stay we refer them to our solicitors for eviction through the courts.”

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