PM says land ownership issues in Westmoreland to be assessed

 

Prime Minister Dr. Andrew Holness says the government is to review the land ownership issue in Westmoreland after it was revealed that most of the residents whose homes were destroyed by Hurricane Melissa had leased the land. 

 

Hundreds of them are now homeless following the powerful storm. 

 

During an interview with Radio Jamaica News at the opening of the police station in Little London, Westmoreland on Friday, Dr. Holness said the government is concerned about the current land ownership arrangement in the parish.

 

"Persons build their homes on stilts because of a lack of permanence in their residential and land settlement arrangements, so that they have to move very often. It is something that has come up to us from the policy level that we will have to address. What we are doing now is to use this opportunity to see how best we can regularise many of the persons who have been occupying lands informally. It is an opportunity to bring structure, to bring permanence and to look at the plight of many citizens who have not had the benefit of land security," he suggested. 

 

He said the government is to ramp up its land titling programme in Westmoreland. 

 

"So I have given Minister [Robert] Montague an assignment to see how best we can scale up the land titling

programmes that we have under the NLA (National Land Agency), including the systematic land titling programme which will bring titles and regularisation to many communities, Westmoreland being a particular focal area," he said.