Dear Editor,
Some villages on the West Coast of Berbice (WCB) can truly be described as places where “time stands still.”
There are some villages where the front lands (residential areas) are privately owned and the agricultural lands (backdam lands) are state owned; but there are other villages where both front and agricultural lands are freehold property.
I refer specifically to Mon Choisi (#3) Edderton (#4) and ZeeLust (#5) villages on the WCB which I know about for sure. These villages, and their proprietors, have an age old problem which needs to be urgently addressed. Lands and Surveys records show that the three aforementioned villages were first surveyed in the late 19th century, with their lands being allotted to proprietors in plots with a north-to-south orientation.
There were some attempts at updating these surveys in the 1960s as per Land Registration activity, ie: creating a register of owners.
But those regularization attempts made in the 1960s were, to all intents and purposes, half-hearted; they never reached the point of issuance of transports or titles to those registered as owners.
In the 1970s and the 1980s, a drainage and irrigation network, to facilitate increased agricultural production, was established in WCB, with the channels running in a north-to-south direction, same as the land holdings. And herein lies the problem for these villages like Mon Choisi, Edderton et al. Ideally, Editor, the agricultural/backdam lands of these villages should be situated at right angles to the D&I network, so that a farmer can access irrigation supplies at one end of his field and discharge such supplies at the other end of the field (the drainage end) when supplies are no longer needed.
The point is that, in the hitherto mentioned villages, the D&I infrastructure for increased agricultural production and poverty alleviation is in place, but villagers are unable to access the network in any way because their holdings run parallel to the channels; and as is known, parallel lines never meet.
The result is that people have arable freehold land that they cannot fully utilize; so there is poverty, socio-economic problems, urban drift and migration.
The solution to this problem is that: (1) the agricultural lands in these villages should be surveyed/measured in their current north-to-south alignment to determine the acreages owned by each proprietor, and then (2) these lands should be turned around ie: given an east-to-west alignment along the entire width of the village, and then be returned with the necessary title to the proprietor in this new alignment.
This is absolutely necessary land reform, and the MMA/ADA should be doing it.
Indeed the MMA/ADA has done such realignment of lands in other villages on the WCB, where the land holdings and the D&I system were parallel to each other.
The better quality of life in these villages can be easily seen.
Parallel lines of the landholding pattern and the D&I system in the freehold villages, as pointed out here, are untenable, since parallel lines can never meet ie: the lands (oriented as they are) can never access the D&I infrastructure.
Editor, this is the 21st century, and the MMA/ADA must do the necessary surveys and land realignment so that the people in these villages can get a shot at modernity.
Sincerely,
Clifford Stanley.
Union Village, WCB (Formerly of #4 Village WCB).
