Nine months after residents of Bozine Town received an order from the Harrold Road Land Development Company to vacate the properties on which they live, those residents remain unmoved.
Attorney General Alfred Sears, who intervened in the matter, gave an update on the dispute on Monday, which has faded from the headlines.
Minister Sears explained that his office has asked the Supreme Court to provide clarification on various titles to the land in New Providence at the centre of the dispute.
Until the court makes a ruling, he indicated that the several thousand residents in question will not be forced off the land which the Supreme Court had previously indicated was owned by the Land Development Company.
“In my capacity as Attorney General we intervened in the action [to protect] the interest of-residents, many of whom have documented titles or would have been living on their respective properties for up to 30 and 40 years in some cases,” he said.
The Attorney General noted that the government is committed to ensuring that the matter is dealt with fairly and will accept the decision of the Court.
The Minister added that because of the large number of persons affected by the land dispute – including elderly persons and children – the Office of the Attorney General determined that it would to best to resolve the dispute before it escalated further.
Minister Sears said he plans to meet with the Bozine Town Steering Committee – which was organized to deal with the controversy – to assure the residents that the government remains committed to finding a resolution.
The Land Development Company had granted several extensions in this matter to allow the intervention by the Government of The Bahamas.
Several months ago, some of the residents of Bozine Town and nearby Knowles Drive demonstrated in Rawson Square in downtown Nassau, appealing to the government to help them keep their properties.
Their parliamentary representative, Minister of Trade and Industry Leslie Miller, has assured repeatedly that no matter what it takes the residents will keep their land.
He has also indicated that the properties in question are really not that expansive and it should not be difficult for the government to help the residents come to an arrangement to keep their land.
For those residents who do not own the land, the Minister has said that the government will help them secure loans.
However, Bozine committee president, Adel Gay, said that many of the residents were not in a position to qualify for loans because they were either elderly, single parents or had no source of income.
The properties in question stretch from the western boundary of Bozine heading to Knowles Drive, which is west of Penn’s Builder’s Square.
While he was not speaking to the Bozine Town dispute directly, Prime Minister Perry Christie said in the House of Assembly during debate on a land reform resolution several weeks before falling ill that the government wanted to ensure that the confusion surrounding titles to land is lifted through the proper administration of land issues.
He noted that over the years the issue of title has been a vexing one for successive governments and he indicated that his government wanted to see this matter addressed once and for all.
By: Bianca Symonette, The Bahama Journal
