Review The iTaukei Land Trust Act, Says Academic

A call to review the iTaukei Land Trust Act and the role of the iTaukei Land Trust Board (TLTB) has been issued by University of the South Pacific academic Paula Raqeukai.

He believes the institution has now become a significant obstacle in the economic empowerment of iTaukei landowners.

The TLTB’s role as trustee of all native land in Fiji is mandated under the 83- year-old Act, which came into existence in 1940.

“It’s time to review the Act because when it was first enacted, many of us indigenous were not educated and at the time, our culture of ‘veirokorokovi’ (hierarchical respect) was still strong and was the basis of consent without questioning anything,” said Raqeukai, who is a lecturer in Land Management at USP and worked for TLTB as a land valuer.

“If you look at how things are at the moment, there are things we need to question now since we are more widely and better educated. For example how is it that our native land is 92 per cent of total land in Fiji and yet, our wealth is only 10 per cent?

“In comparison, our Indian brothers and sisters own very little land and yet they own around 70 per cent of national wealth. That just shows that something is wrong. And a lot of that has to do with the institution that looks after the land and how it has not been able to unlock the economic value of the land for the benefit of the landowner.”

He said the archaic law has instead spawned cases of abuse and neglect by TLTB of its role as trustee, which had robbed landowners of their rights, as evident in the number of cases that had made their way to court.

In the most recent case, in April, TLTB was ordered to pay $360,000 by the Supreme Court for a case in Nawaka, Nadi where a lease had started out as a Tenancy At Will (TAW) agreement for three acres and after 20 years when the land was sold, the three acres had mysteriously increased to 13 acres.

“If you read the judgment of that case, even the judges who presided over it could see the problem at TLTB,” said Mr Raqeukai.

He highlighted another instance in the recently launched Sustainable Coastal and Ocean Research Institute (SCORI) at USP, which would perform data collection functions for countries in the Pacific including Fiji to help tackle issues such as coastal vulnerability, ocean state forecast, potential fishing zones and tsunami forecasting among other things.

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