Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) will in the upcoming meeting of parliament table a number of bills that are motivated by the party’s 2019 election manifesto, party Secretary General Mpho Balopi has said.

Since October elections the party has been subject of criticism from various quarters including political commentators that it has failed to walk its promise. Balopi has however told this publication this week that the party is initiating several reforms that speak to the party promises contained in the manifesto.

Siem Reap provincial administration director Sok Thol said on Sunday that provincial authorities were preparing a working group to update veterans’ social land concessions in Khnar Sandai and Khun Ream communes in Banteay Srei district.

Thol said in 2017, the government issued sub-decree No 33 to cut 1,369ha for the Cambodia Veteran Association (CVA) in Siem Reap province to distribute to about 313 families of homeless veterans. The sub-decree was meant to assist about 6,500 people.

Settlers at 9-Mile quarry celebrated in style and colour after receiving their long awaited land titles from Prime Minister James Marape and National Capital District Governor Powes Parkop yesterday. However, this did not go down well with more 200 families who had lost their land to an access road into the quarry. Those settlers who were living at the entrance of the quarry lost their land while those at the back celebrated with Mr Marape and NCD Governor Parkop.

Emmanuel Okas Wike is the President, Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers. He spoke to ANN GODWIN in Port Harcourt on how the Land Use Act has undermined professional practice, measures that could transform the real estate sector, and the role of estate surveyors in developing the economy.

Cambodia’s government is unable to resolve the country’s myriad land disputes because many of them involve senior officials, Minister of Interior Sar Kheng said in a rare acknowledgement Tuesday, as a rights group urged authorities to take action against all perpetrators of illegal land grabs equally.

Speaking at a conference that included provincial governors and local authorities from across the country, Sar Kheng did not disclose the names of the involved officials but said that at least one of the disputes involved one of Cambodia’s deputy prime ministers.

Land reform minister Calle Schlettwein has urged regional governors to use land as a form of correcting past injustices while creating economic opportunities for disadvantaged Namibians to address inequality.

EMEKA ELEH is a past president, Nigerian Institution of Estate Surveyors and Valuers (NIESV) and a principal partner at Ubosi Eleh and Company. In this interview with BERTRAM NWANNEKANMA, he spoke on the imperative of land titling, challenges of inaccurate data and other issues in the real estate sector.

• Mbonjo sits in the heart of Cameroon’s country’s largest oil palm and rubber-producing region. In 2000, state-owned oil palm plantations around the village were acquired by Société Financière des Caoutchoucs (Socfin), a Belgian holding company that operates palm oil and rubber plantations through dozens of subsidiaries across Africa and Southeast Asia.

…says women most affected over non-inclusiveness

Environmental Right Action/ Friends of the Earth, ERA/FoEN have asserted that the incident of land grabbing and deforestation was becoming increasingly alarming in various Cross River communities.

A giant Vietnamese agribusiness company is destroying indigenous land in Cambodia’s Ratanakkiri province, said a joint press release from Equitable Cambodia and Inclusive Development International that was published on Monday.

The human rights groups wrote that many indigenous people in Cambodia’s Ratanakkiri province have been waiting for years for the Vietnamese rubber company, Hoang Anh Gia Lai (HAGL), to finally return their sacred land, as had been promised by a 2015 mediation agreement.

Like different land management systems across the world, land management systems varied in different territories. 

Hundreds of local residents and monks blocked a national road on June 19 in a protest against a sand dredging company they say is illegally occupying pagoda land.

About 600 residents and monks blocked National Road 6A from about 8 to 9:30am near the site of the sand dredging operation, which was set up along a section of the Mekong River in Kandal province’s Mok Kampoul district in Prek Anhchanh commune.